UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE 

STARS 

REFLECTIONS, LITERARY AND 
PHILOSOPHICAL 

P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D. 



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THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 

Ivvu Coi-its Received 

OCT 12 1903 

a Copyright Entry 

CLASS «-XXo.No. 

COPY' A. 



Copyright, /goj, American Ecclesiastical Review 



CONTENTS 

Part I. — Autumn 5 

Part II. — Winter 73 

Part III. — Spring , 153 

Part IV. — Summer , 223 



PART I 

AUTUMN 



(3) 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 



" Mio picciol orto 
A me sei vigna, e campo, e selva, e prato." 

— Baldu 



T 



Part I. — Autumn. 

I. 

HIS is its great, its only merit. It is a hortus conclusus, et 
disseptus. Three high walls bound it, north, south, and 
west ; and on the east are lofty stables, effectually shutting out all 
possibility of being seen by too curious eyes. It is a secluded 
spot, and in one particular angle, at the western end, is walled in 
by high trees and shrubs, and you see only leafage and grasses, 
and the eye of God looking through the interminable azure. The 
monks' gardens bound it on the northern side ; and here, in the 
long summer evenings, I hear the brothers chaunting in alternate 
strophes the Rosary of Mary. The sounds come over and through 
my garden wall, and they are muffled into a sweet, dreamy mono- 
tone of musical prayer. But the monks never look over my 
garden wall, because they are incurious, and because there is not 
much to be seen. For I cannot employ a professional gardener, 
and it is my own very limited knowledge, but great love for 
flowers — " the sweetest things God has made, and forgot to put a 
soul in " — and the obedient handiwork of a humble laborer, that 
keeps my garden always clean and bright, and some are kind 
enough to say, beautiful. And we have sycamores, and pines, and 
firs ; and laburnum, and laurel, and lime, and lilac ; and my 
garden is buried, deep as a well, beneath dusky walls of forest 
trees, beeches and elms and oaks, that rival in sublimity and alti- 
tude their classic brethren of Lebanon, leaving but the tiniest 
margin of blue mountain, stretching sierra-like between them and 
the stars. 



6 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

II. 

But my garden is something more to me. It is my Stoa — my 
porch, where some unseen teacher ever speaks, as if with voice 
authoritative. It is to me the grove of Academe. Here, under 
the laburnum, or the solitary lime or sycamore, I walk with spirits 
quite as wise as those who trod the ancient groves with Plato, and 
questioned him sharply, and drew out his wonderful dialectical 
powers. But my spirits question not. They are no sophists, 
weaving subtleties out of the web and woof of dainty words ; 
nor do they ask why and wherefore. They only speak by their 
silence, and answer my interrogations. For I am an inquisitive 
being, and the mystery of the world weighs heavily upon me. 
I have the faculty of wonder strangely developed in me. An 
ephemeris, floating in the summer air ; a worm creeping from 
cave to cave in the warm, open earth ; the pink tips of a daisy's 
fingers make me glad with surprise. Miracles are all around me, 
and I take them literally, and wonder at them. Omnia admirari! 
is my motto ; I have not steeled myself into the stoicism, that can 
see worlds overturned — with a shrug. I have a child's wonder, 
and a child's love. 

III. 

For example, I want to know who is the time-keeper and warden 
and night-watchman of my flowers. It is not the sun, because they 
are awake before the sun, and after his rays slant high above their 
heads. It is not light, because whilst it is yet light, light enough 
to read with ease and pleasure, behold, my little flowers close' 
their eyes ever so softly and silently, as if they feared to disturb 
the harmonies of Nature ; and as if they would say : " We are 
such little things, never mind us ! We are going to sleep, for we 
are so tiny and humble, why should we keep watch and ward 
over the mighty Universe ? " And again, who has bidden my 
crocuses wake up from their wintry sleep, whilst the frost is on the 
grass, and the snow is yet hiding in the corners of the garden 
beds ? And here, my little snowdrop, so pure and fragile, braves 
the keen arrows of frost and sleet, and pushes its pure blossoms 
out of the iron earth ! This is the bulb of a hyacinth ; this the 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 7 

bulb of a gladiolus or a dahlia. But the former wakes up in 
early spring, and hangs its sweet bells on the pure virgin air ; while 
the latter sleep on through the cold of Spring and the blazing 
heat of Summer, and only wake up when all Nature is dying 
around them, and seems to be calling, calling for another proof 
of its immortality. Who is the watchman of the flowers ? Who 
holds his timepiece in his hands, and says: "Sleep on, O dahlia! 
Sleep, though Spring should call for universal allegiance, and 
Summer winds challenge thee to resurrection ; but awake, Nar- 
cissus, and tremble at thine own beauty ! " It is not the atmos- 
phere. The Spring might be warm, and the Autumn chilly ; or 
vice versa. It is not temperature, for the most fragile things 
flourish in the cold. What is it ? Who hath marked their times 
and seasons, and warns them when their hour hath struck ? Who 
but Thou, great Warden of the Universe ? 



IV. 

Yet, whatever be said of times and seasons, which the Father 
has placed in His own power, I perceive that there is implanted 
in all being, even in these tiny flowers, a principle, a law, which 
appears to be universal. That law is what may be called the 
centrifugal force of being, or the power and tendency to expan- 
sion. Wherever it is focalized, there it is — the universal and 
uniform impulse of everything to get outside itself, to enlarge its 
sphere of being, to develop its potencies, to become other than 
it is. It is true of the nebula, which is ever broadening and 
deepening, until by perpetual accretions it grows into a sun; 
it is true of the acorn, that yearns to become an oak ; of the 
bulb that is ambitious to become a flower. And again is there 
a counter law, that by some hidden, irresistible force is equally 
bent on repressing this impulse, and destroying it. Expansion 
means repression. For the solitary, innate force that seeks 
to develop or reproduce, there are a hundred external forces 
that try to suspend or check that evolution. When my beau- 
tiful gladiolus comes forth, painted in all lovely colors, — saffron 
tinged with red, or purple streaked with gold, everything around 
will conspire to destroy the loveliness. And the moment a 



S UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

nebula rounds its sidereal fires into a central sun, all its sister 
suns will seek to drag it into the cauldrons of their own terrific 
fires ; it will be pelted by vagrant comets, and stoned with fiery 
meteors ; and that Hercules of the heavens, that invisible giant, 
Gravitation, will drag it hither and thither, and force its cen- 
trifugal and expansive powers into the training circles of the 
Universe. 

V. 

And weep not, O thou child of genius, if obeying the universal 
law, and driven on, not by ambition, or other unworthy impulse, 
thou seekest to cast at the feet of men the vast and beautiful 
efflorescence of thy own mind shouldst thou find all things around 
thee conspiring to check and destroy thy imperative development. 
Thou wilt expand and grow and put forth beauty after beauty ; 
and lo ! men will wonder at thee, but seek to destroy thee. Harsh 
winds will blow their keen arrows into thy face ; the crystals of ice 
will nestle in thy bosom to chill thee unto death ; winged demons 
will probe thee with their stings, and steal away thy perfections. 
Weep not, and murmur not ! It is the law — the law of the star 
and the flower; of the clod and the nebula. If thou seekest 
thy own peace and comfort, hide thyself in the caves of the 
mountains, or the caverns of the ocean ; repress all thy longings, 
check nature in its flight after the ideal ; be content to live and 
not to grow ; to exist but not to develop. But canst thou ? No, 
alas ! Nature is not to be repressed. Thou, too, must go into 
the vortices; and in pain and suffering, in mortification and dis- 
solution, pass out to the Unknown ! 



VI. 

What then ? Well then, imitate Nature in its work, and— its 
Indifference ! Keep on never minding. If thou tarriest to pick 
up the stones flung at thee, or to scrape the mud from thy gar- 
ments, thou wilt never accomplish thy destiny ! The energies thou 
dost waste in fretting or philosophizing about human waywardness 
or malevolence, had better been spent in wholesome work. The 
time and thought thou expendest in answering the unanswerable, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 9 

or explaining the inexplicable, would help thee to give the world 
out of the storehouse of wholesome thought, new vitalizing princi- 
ples, fresh forces for wellbeing and welldoing. Well said the 
poet : — 

Glory of virtue to suffer, to right the wrong ; 

Nay, but she aims not at glory, no lover of glory she ; 

Give her the glory of going on, and for ever to be ! 

Aye, so it is ! Life is for work, not for weeping. Thou, too, 
hast thy life-work before thee, mapped for thee by the Eternal. 
It may be the merest drudgery, physical or intellectual ; and the 
results are not to be foreseen. Thou must work in the dark, and 
there is no door outward to the future. But work steadily on! 
There is thy vocation and redemption : — 

Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum / l 



VII. 

What if some day it were found that this mighty mystery, 
gravitation, resolved itself into the universal law of expansion and 
repression ? The theory of Le Sage that the Universe is filled with 
infinitely minute particles that are continually colliding with larger 
masses, pushing them forward; but that two large contiguous 
masses, shielded from the bombardment, are driven irresistibly 
toward each other, really resolves itself into this. Or, the more 
recent theory of the vortex atom, whirling around and creating 
suction in the ether, thus dragging great inert masses toward each 
other, is not this the same ? Why is a column of smoke allowed 
to ascend and expand into rings or plumes until it is lost in the ether? 
And why is a column of water from its fountain allowed to expand 
but a little, and is then thrown back violently on the ground ? 
And why is a stone not allowed to expand at all, but is flung back 
peremptorily to the earth ? Is it gravitation, or the law of expan- 
sion, that obtains fully in the case of smoke, partially in that of 
water, not at all in the solid matter, unless, as in the case of meteors, 
the propulsion is so great that it overcomes the resisting and repel- 

1 Considering nothing done so long as there remains ought to be done ! 



10 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

lent forces, and following its natural or rather the universal ten- 
dency, expands into flame, thence into vapor, and is lost ? And 
what a parallel with the meteoric flame of genius ! 



VIII. 

I think Schelling, that most poetical of German philosophers, 
pushes this idea too far. He makes the usual mistake of poets, 
of passing from the abstract to the concrete, and lowers a great 
idea by making it subservient to a whim. One can understand 
his theory of Creation as being the attempt of the Infinite to em- 
body itself, or rather to expand its supreme energies in the Finite; 
and also his conception of Mind as the second movement of the 
universal law, by which the Finite, driven back and seeking ab- 
sorption in the Infinite, unfolds itself in Mind. A Catholic philoso- 
pher might seize the idea, to explain the existence of the Trinity, 
as the eternal expansion of the Divine Intellect in the contempla- 
tion of its own perfections in the Word; and the continuous 
expansion of the Father and Word in the procession of the Spirit 
from both. When Schelling, driving his theory to extremes, 
explains the fall of Adam by the tendency to break away from 
law and expand into individualism, and the Incarnation as the 
reunion or contraction of the vagrant human will into the Divine, 
one cannot help feeling that truth is being distorted into ingenuity, 
and that freedom is sacrificed at the shrine of " universal and 
imperative law." 



IX. 

Is it not singular how that idea of the soul's emanation from 
God, and its subsequent absorption in God, has always haunted 
the human mind with its splendid suggestion of a divine origin 
and a divine destiny ? I can never understand how Novalis 
could call Spinoza a " god-intoxicated man," for the latter elim- 
inated God from the Universe, making Him a mere substance, if 
universal. Schelling would have better earned the description, for 
he preached at first God as the eternal, self-existent, omniscient, 
and creative mind. But in very truth the epithet might be applied 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. II 

to every mystic, for all have seemed to be so filled with the idea of 
the great Supreme Being, as to lose themselves in the contempla- 
tion, and to have passed into that sublime trance, where they have 
leaped beyond the finite conditions of time and space, and to have 
touched that which is known as the Absolute. This is the Potenz 
der Subsumption of Schelling ; the " uncreated deep " of Tauler 
calling to the created, and both becoming one ; it is what Denis 
the Carthusian calls " the plunging in and swallowing up of the 
soul in the Abysm of Divinity " ; what Richard of St. Victor calls 
" the passing of the soul into God " ; what Cardinal Bona describes 
when he says : " Thou art me and mine ; my whole essence 
is in Thee." Somehow it has always seemed to me that, with 
this strange tendency towards Catholic truth manifested by the 
wandering intellects of philosophy, some day there will be a rec- 
onciliation; or rather these cometary lights, which also have 
derived whatever is luminous in them from the great uncreated 
Light of lights, will be drawn into their right orbits in that mighty 
system of which Christ is the Eternal Sun. For whatever far 
spaces they have illumined, they manifest a tendency of an invin- 
cible attraction towards Him ; whilst they wander afar, some 
unseen power seems to draw them toward itself, and to hold them 
from being lost in space ; their light, though they believe them- 
selves self-luminous, is an emanation of the light of the Gospel ; 
and it is the candor lucis aeternae that fills their extinguished lamps. 
How eternally true is the apothegm : Veram philosophiam esse 
veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram 
philosophiam. 



X. 

And yet, an ingenious thinker could construct a theory of the 
Universe out of this simple law. For what is evolution but a 
new name for expansion ; and the interchanges of species, and 
the systole and diastole of human history ; and the expansion of 
kingdoms and their destruction ; and the processes of suns ; and 
the revolutions of seasons; and the eternal strivings of the just 
and perfect ones ; and the aggressions of the wicked ; and the 
growth of genius, and all the many other changes and vicissitudes 



12 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

by which God conserves the equilibrium of His Universe — what 
are all these secret yet unerring forces but modifications of the 
universal law: increase and multiply, and — pass ! Or, rather: 
expand, contract, and return ! 



XL 

There never yet was a Moses without a Miriam, a Socrates 
without a Xanthippe, a Caesar without a Cassius, a Napoleon 
without his Moscow. The law is universal and inexorable. 
Every expansive power in Nature and Man, in history, in philos- 
ophy, in poetry, has its enemy. Kingdoms do not crumble to 
pieces from within. It is the outer enemy that destroys. Baby- 
lon fell through Cyrus ; Jerusalem through Titus ; Rome through 
Vandal and Visigoth ; the Eastern Empire through Mohammed ; 
and if moribund kingdoms, like Spain, drag on their lifeless exist- 
ence through centuries, it is simply because the antagonist has 
never arisen to attack and destroy. Similarly, every government 
has its opposition ; every statesman, his opponent ; every orator, 
his rival ; every poet, his critic. Milton had to fight for his 
existence; Wordsworth struggled for fifty years for recognition, 
reluctantly yielded at last ; Shelley was hounded from England, 
and unrecognized for half a century after death ; Gifford, the 
ex-cobbler, and Terry, the actor, drove Keats to a premature 
grave ; and so on with all the brilliant and expansive geniuses of 
the earth. The tendency of the great is to grow ; of the vile, to 
repress and destroy. God's prerogative of creation and develop- 
ment belongs to the former ; man's peculiar bent toward corrup- 
tion to the latter. 



XII. 

Hence, no one need be, or ought to be, surprised at what some 
call the slow expansion of the Church. She has all the elements of 
development centered in her strong heart, or tugging at her breasts 
for that spiritual and intellectual pabulum which will enable them 
to grow, and vitalize in turn all the torpid faculties of a worn-out, 
effete civilization. " Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes," 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 3 

said the Prophet, " for many are the children of the deserted, 
rather than of her who hath a husband." Yet her progress has 
been slow ; and her vast utilities circumscribed. Where she has 
gained, she has lost ; and where she appears the loser, she gains 
the more. For the first three hundred years of her existence, 
every attempt to break her bounds, and go forth on her mighty 
mission, was stopped by fire and sword. When she rose above 
persecution from without, she was checked by rebellion from 
within ; and her whole history has been a conflict between her 
own innate and immense potencies and desires for expansion and 
development, and the outer forces which make for destruction. 
What she has gained in the New World she has lost in the Old, 
and vice versa ; where she has won victories over kings, she has 
been dishonored by peoples ; what she has gained in art, she has 
lost in science ; and her very hand-maiden, Philosophy, has grown 
to be her rival in the affections of her children. Yet, there she 
pursues her immortal destiny, slowly gaining ground over 
humanity, every check developing her latent strength, every 
aggression met with indomitable valor ; the mustard-seed growing, 
growing in spite of wind and weather, the axe and the fire, the 
Titan and the pigmy, the parasite and the insect, until it fulfils its 
promised and prophetic destiny, and overshadows all the earth. 



XIII. 

In a limited and sectional way, the case of the Church's 
growth and check in England is conspicuous. Fifty years ago, 
forces were let loose in that country which promised to extend the 
spiritual power and supremacy of Catholicism over all the land. 
The revival in Oxford and elsewhere seemed to promise a univer- 
sal resurrection. The best moral and intellectual forces in Eng- 
land declared for Rome. So sudden, so important, so frequent 
were the conversions that it was fondly hoped that the end of the 
century would see the ancient Catholic land once more in union 
with Christendom. Alas ! the expansion was but temporary. It 
was tolerated, only to be driven back with greater force. The 
united energies of agnosticism, indifferentism, and open infidelity 
amongst the highest and lowest classes, and fierce bigotry and 



14 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

intolerance of the dissenting middle classes, not only stemmed, but 
drove back the tide of intellectual and religious thought which 
was tending towards Rome. The mighty fissure which the Trac- 
tarian Movement made in the Church of England, and which divided 
its members into the two broad sections of supernaturalism and 
latitudinarianism, was again closed up in a kind of common indif- 
ferentism. The time was not opportune. When education is more 
advanced, and toleration universal, there will be a general move- 
ment towards positive religion ; and then the final reaction to 
Catholicism. 



XIV. 

I sat in my garden a few evenings ago. It was in the late 
summer. The swallows, that had been screaming and circling 
round and round in ever-narrowing rings far up in the clear sky, 
had gone down to the eaves of my house, where, in their little 
mud-cabins, they now slept with their young. There was deep 
silence on all things — silence of midnight, or midseas. A few 
tendrils of white jasmine had stolen in over my neighbor's 
wall. The twilight had suddenly departed, and night had come 
down. I could barely see the white stars of the jasmine, but I 
could feel their gentle, perfumed breath. Once or twice a vagrant 
and wanton breeze stole over the wall and seized the top tassels 
of my Austrian pine, and lifted the sleepy leaves of the sycamores, 
which murmured and fell back to rest. Then silence again, deep 
as the grave ! I saw the suns of glinting green, and red, and 
yellow. I felt the throb of the Universe. As the lookout on a 
great steamer on the high seas, staring into the darkness, feels the 
mighty vessel throb beneath him, and watches the phosphor- 
escence of the waves, and hears the beat of the engines, so felt I 
the thrill of Being — the vibration of existence. And as far up in 
the darkness on the bridge of the vessel, silent, invisible, stands 
the captain, who controls the mighty mechanism beneath him — 
dumb, watchful, with a light touch on the electric knob before 
him, so I saw Thee, though Thou, too, wert invisible, O my God — 
I saw Thy finger on the magnetic key of Thy Universe ; and I 
feared not the night, nor the darkness, nor the grave, for I knew 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 5 

that the destinies of us and of Thy worlds were safe in Thy 
keeping. 

Science shall never advance on right lines, except by imitating 
God. It is the wisdom of God in its infancy ! 



XV. 

I love the science that reveals. I hate the science that explains, 
or affects to explain. I confess I revel in mysteries. The more 
profound and cryptic they are, the greater is my faith and delight. 
The merely natural palls on me. I see, wonder, measure, and — 
despise. I feel that I am its equal, no matter how stupendous 
it is. I measure myself with it, and lo ! I am head and shoulders 
over it. The tiny retina of the eye of a child grasps and holds 
the whole dome of worlds. The soul of a hind grasps the revealed 
universe, whilst man wonders at it. But the mightiest telescope 
ever invented and the all-searching eye of science cannot penetrate 
the impenetrable, the Universal ; and the mind of a Newton or a 
Leibniz sinks paralyzed by Infinity. Tell me all the " fairy tales 
of Science." I wonder and am glad. But in a little time the 
wonder ceases. Weigh your suns and analyze them ! Calculate 
your distances by billions and trillions of miles ! Reveal your 
purple stars, and the radiant light that is flung from two or three 
varicolored suns upon their happy planets. I thank you for 
the revelation. I exult and am glad. But don't go one step 
further ! Don't speak of Impersonal Force or Universal Motion 
as explanatory of such mystery ! This time again I laugh, not in 
pleasure, but in scorn, or rather pity. 



XVI. 

People say to me : " Never seen Rome ! or Florence ! St. 
Peter's ! The frescoes of the Sistine ! The galleries in the Pitti 
Palace!" Never! Nor do I much care! If I were to goto 
Italy I would go to seek the Supernatural, because it is the only 
thing I could really and permanently admire. I would go to 
Rome, and see the Spiritual Head of Christ's Empire ; I would 
go to Loretto, and kiss the ground once trodden by Jesus and 



I<5 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Holy Mary. I would go to Assisi ; and walk every step of the 
Via Crucis the " poor man " trod. I would make a pilgrimage 
to Siena ; and I would visit every stigmatica and ecstatica. And 
there in her humble chamber, I would wonder and rejoice ! I 
would have emotions which the grandeur of St. Peter's, and the 
terrors of Vesuvius, and the beauties of Naples, and the sub- 
limity of Pompeii could never excite. For I would come into 
touch with the Supernatural — with God ; and the work of His 
fingers is more to me than the most stupendous creations of 
human hands ! 

XVII. 

It is a good thing for men to be scientific. It makes them so 
humble. At least, it ought to make them so. I am quite pre- 
pared to hear that St. Thomas and Suarez were the humblest of 
men ; that Newton and Leibniz were little children. It is only 
right and reasonable. When the former in their tremendous re- 
searches into some awful mystery, like the Trinity, evolved propo- 
sition after proposition, unwound as it were cerements of the 
awful secret, and then laid down their pens, like the scribes of 
old, and covered their faces, and murmured with full hearts: 
Sanctus ! Sanctus ! Sanctus ! one can admire them whilst pitying 
them. But when a sciolist, also unwrapping mystery after mys- 
tery, in search of the Great First Cause, comes suddenly upon 
an adamantine secret, that refuses to be broken or unweft, and 
lays down his pen and mutters, Unknowable ! one can pity and 
despise ! 

XVIII. 

God is quite right. He keeps locked the secret chambers of 
His knowledge and His works, because He knows that if He 
opened them, we would despise Him. Leibniz said, that if he 
had a choice he would prefer the pursuit of knowledge forever 
to the sudden acquisition of perfect knowledge. One of the many 
pleasures of heaven will be the eternal, but slow unlocking of the 
secret cabinets of God. There must be mysteries, or man's pride 
would equal Lucifer's. It is God's way from the beginning. " Of 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. *7 

all the trees of the garden, thou may'st eat ; but of this one thou 
shalt not eat ! " No one shall enter the Holy of Holies but the 
High Priest ; and that but once a year ! No wonder they tied a 
rope to his sacrificial vestments to drag forth his dead body, if 
Jehovah smote him. And yet the Lord is not in the thunder and 
the storm, but in the breathing of zephyrs, and the sighs of the 
gentle breeze ! 

XIX. 

To a certain class of mind the doctrine of our intuitive knowl- 
edge of God has a peculiar fascination. It seems so much higher 
and more honorable than the slow acquisition of ideas through 
the senses, that I am quite sure it would give unbounded gratifica- 
tion to this school of Catholic idealists, if it could be shown that it 
was not inconsistent with the most approved scheme of Catholic 
philosophy. Some writers deem it quite untenable, as tending to 
Ontologism. But it may happen that in this, as in so many other 
things, the confusion arises in tongues, — in different meanings and 
interpretations of the same word. That fine thinker and metaphy- 
sician, Father Dalgairns, 2 seems to teach in his standard work on 
The Holy Communion, that the idea of God is inborn and imme- 
diately certain ; that the Fathers call man, OeoBiSafcros ; that man 
holds in himself the seeds of the knowledge of God (ra cnrep/jLara 
tt}? Oeoyvcoaias) ; and all this chimes in so harmoniously with all 
the experiences and feelings of the above-named school, that it 
would be an incalculable pleasure and delight to know that one 
might hold such beautiful and transcendent truths, and yet be at 
one with the great scholastics, and the most approved views of 
modern philosophy. There are few souls whom the lines of 
Wordsworth do not haunt as if with the revelation of a spirit- 
world : — 

"And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

2 Quoting Hettinger. Appendix D. Holy Communion : et passim. 



IS UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought ; 
And rolls through all things. ' ' 



XX. 

This ethereal sense, this quick intuitive perception, which has 
often thrown back upon themselves the finest souls, and moved 
them by its swift and sudden revelation of the infinite, even to 
tears, is something altogether apart from mere logic or reason. 
Nay, perhaps, we had best interpret it as not so much a momentary 
penetration of the spirit behind the veils, as the sudden break in 
the clouds that hide God's Face ; and the swift dawning, clouded 
in a moment again, of that transcendent Light that makes the 
heaven of heavens luminous by its splendors. Hence let us say 
that this swift perception of the Infinite is not so much the effort of 
unrestrained fancy, or imagination, as the sudden revelation of God 
to choice spirits, — the swift and unexpected rending of the veil, 
the parting of the cloud for a moment ; and then, the darkness, 
but no longer the doubt. This is akin to the condition ev 0eo$ /cal 
€fc<f>p(Dv, "bereft of reason, but filled with God"; the sense of 
the vision, 

' ' when the light of sense 

Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed 

The invisible world. ' ' 



XXI. 

This intuitional principle of knowledge, although attributed in 
its origin to the pantheistic school of Schelling, is really the prop- 
erty of all poetical minds. In the German school it passed to the 
extreme of subjective Pantheism, just as in the Neo-Platonic 
schools it became a most dangerous form of mysticism. But that 
it is not irreconcilable with more prosaic forms of thought may 
be shown by the not incurious fact that the Scottish school of 
philosophy, essentially and professedly the school of common 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 19 

sense, is also the great school where the intuitional perception of 
God is unreservedly taught. The Scottish universities have, par- 
ticularly of recent years, returned to the Aristotelian method, and 
with it to the intuitional philosophy. Reid, Brown, and, greatest 
of all, Hamilton, have been ardent Aristotelians. The latter pre- 
sented the Organon, the Nichomachean Ethics, and the Rhetoric 
of Aristotle to the Oxford Examiners when presenting himself for 
his degree ; and it is said of him that he took up the first great 
treatise, as a recreation, when wearied of kindred studies, so com- 
pletely had he mastered it and so easy had its abstruse meta- 
physics become. Yet he lays his greatest claim to fame to the 
fact that he first affected to have bridged over the chasm that 
yawned between mind and substance ; and his disciples maintain 
that this was his original contribution to modern thought. What 
was his secret ? What the airy bridge that he flung from the solid 
basework of consciousness across the dark and unspanned gulf 
that cut away that consciousness from the external world ? How 
did he pass from consciousness of the Idea to consciousness of 
the Represented ? By intuition ! It may, or may not, be accepted 
as the final solution of the one great problem of metaphysics ; and 
many will be disposed to think it leaves matters just as they were. 
Nevertheless, it is significant that a mind so strongly rationalistic 
should seek in intuition the key of the great arcana, and yet cling 
to the rigid precision of the great mediaeval schools. And this 
tradition, left by Scotland's greatest thinker, has passed down into 
and been incorporated with the teaching of the great universities, 
until the present professor in the chair of philosophy at St. Andrew's 
rejects every other argument for the existence of God — cosmo- 
logical, teleological, etc. — and pins all his faith to the intuitional 
method. And then, perhaps, if all were known, it would be found 
that the intuitions of philosophers, no matter how veiled in the 
strange terminology of the science, is after all something akin to 
Faith. 

XXII. 

Strange, too, it is, that all modern agnostics seem to claim 
Wordsworth as their prophet. His vague abstractions supply the 
place of religion, without binding the mind to dogma. It is the 



20 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

concrete, the defined, against which the pride of intellect persist- 
ently revolts. It will not say Credo! but Sentio ! It puts the 
Absolute, the Unconditioned, the Non-Ego, the soul of Nature, in 
place of " God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and 
Earth." It puts agnosticism in place of limitation ; incognizable 
for incomprehensible. It declares the mystery of the universe 
insoluble, because the only possible solution implicates them in 
a declaration of faith. But man's soul must have something to 
believe in, even if it were a devil. But that " something " must 
not limit human freedom, nor arrogate rights over humanity, nor 
disturb liberty of action and thought; and, above all, it must not 
be the Arbiter and Judge of the Living and the Dead. But God 
is all that in the Christian hegemony. Well, then, we must fall 
back upon the Impersonal, the Uncreated, the Soul of things. 

XXIII. 

We shall worship in " temples not made of hands " ; our 
liturgy shall be poetry ; our ritual, the changes of the seasons ; 
our sacrament, communion with Nature ; our priesthood, the poet 
or the philosopher ; and our apotheosis, the general absorption of 
all that we are, or shall be, into the universal Soul ! No wonder 
that Wordsworth, who wrote so bitterly against the Church, as 
the enemy of all " mental and moral freedom," should be the 
High Priest of the new dispensation. I think this is really the 
secret of his power over moderns. It is not his poetry, which is 
but a purple patch here and there on his gaberdine ; nor his 
philosophy, which is bald and bare enough ; but this communion 
with nature and worship of it, and tacit exclusion of the super- 
natural in the Christian sense, that makes him popular with such 
writers as Matthew Arnold, or Mrs. Humphry Ward, or Emerson. 
He is not a pantheist; such a term is quite inapplicable to Words- 
worth. He is a Pythagorean, admitting at the same time, but 
concealing, the existence of the Supreme Being, and concentrating 
all his thoughts on the Anima Mimdi. 

' XXIV. 

And yet, though I have quoted Wordsworth here as an 
example of the Intuitionist, I feel that I am somewhat in error. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 21 

He has been quoted as an apologist for Pantheism ; as a defender 
of Christian Theism. His friends do not seek to refute the former 
aspersion ; his enemies are careless about the latter imputation. 
Yet, he is neither one nor the other. It is not the God of Spinoza 
he beholds and hears, for Spinoza saw nothing but dumb, irre- 
sponsive matter with its one essential of extension ; neither does 
he address that personal God, whom we know as distinct from 
His universe, yet permeating in it, 

Intra cuncta, nee inclusus, 
Extra cuncta, nee exclusus. 

His appeal is to the " Presences of Nature in the Sky," " The 
Visions of the Hills," " The Souls of Lonely Places," the 

. sentiment of Being spread 
O'er all that moves, and all that seemeth still ; 
" The Eternal Soul, clothed in the brook, with purer 
robes than those of flesh and blood. ' ' 

But all this is not the delirium of Pantheism, even in the diluted 
shape, called " Higher Pantheism," nor yet is it the quiet worship 
of God, the Creator and Consecrator. It is simply the instinct, 
or faculty, of Personification ; the creation from his own poetic 
subjectivity of the Anima Mundi, — the soul that belongs to all 
inferior creation ; the response to the beauty and mystery and sym- 
bolism of the earth. And it is strange that the poet, who pos- 
sessed this sensibility to a far higher degree than Wordsworth, 
and whose writings are one extended personification, acted upon 
and interacting, of all the powers, passions and sympathies of 
nature, is never quoted either as a Pantheist, or as a Deist. Yet 
he is the poet of abstractions and idealism ; and he has written 
more poetry than Wordsworth has written prose. And this is a 
momentous word. 

XXV. 

This faculty of personification of the abstract — of casting the 
features of one's own mind across landscape, or human passion, 
or human history, is really what has given such reflective intellects 



22 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

a right to the title — Poet. That dogmatic and rather haughty 
saying of Tasso : 

Non c' e in mundo chi merita notne di Creatore, che Dio ed il Poeta, 

has some foundation in reason. Other artists work on rude materi- 
als, and fashion and form them according to their concepts. The 
poet creates his own materials, makes his own divinities, and wor- 
ships them. In a kind of Bacchic fury he calls up visions from the 
vasty deep, and blows them back into nothingness again. He is 
the necromancer of Nature — that is, when he is a real poet, not a 
mere scene painter, for the greater dramatist, Nature. Hence, 
too, is he priest and prophet, uttering sometimes in an unknown 
language the secrets of high and hidden things ; and each poet 
has his own neophytes and disciples, who study his language, 
imitate his style, try to find not only the symmetry, but the sym- 
bolism of his words, and sit at his feet in life, at the foot of his 
statue when dead, and call him their master, their teacher, and 
their king. 

XXVI. 

And yet, strange to say, one of the greatest of these creators 
founds an argument for the non-existence of God in the formula: 
Mind can only perceive, it can never create ; adding, however, the 
saving clause, " so far as we know Mind." Quite so ! But man's 
mind is the lowest spirituality. And to argue from that to the 
powers of the Supreme and Sovereign Mind, is a strange fatuity. 
But is it true that man's mind does not create ? Where, then, O 
Poet of Atheism, was your Alastor, and your Beatrice, and your 
Prometheus, before you created them ; where the " Eve of this 
Eden," the " ruling grace of the sweet garden " ; where the " De- 
sires and Adorations," " winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies " 
that wept over Adonis ; where 

The legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 
Where that and thou art no unbidden guest 
In the still cave of the witch, poesy ? 

Either there is no poet, but only a scene-painter, either there is 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 23 

no poetry, but word-painting; or else there is a projection over 
nature and man of a something which is not theirs. 

A light that never was on sea or flood ; and a strange reflec- 
tion, where hover all beautiful forms of the Imagination, is not 
merely what the poet perceives or imagines, but the distinct crea- 
tion of his mind ! 

XXVII. 

Some one, I am almost sure it is Emerson, has said that every 
great thinker must be, at one time or another in his life, an Ideal- 
ist. Idealism is the land of dreams and visions, into which every 
new, fine spirit passes and wanders, dazed and blind, not knowing 
what to think, and rather inclined to believe that life and all its 
surroundings is a delusion — some vision painted by a sprite of 
evil, to torture or distress, or madden him with its beauteous 
unrealities. Then, one day, he leaps over the bridge of Common 
Sense and Experience, and finds himself in the world of hard 
and stern realities. He rubs his eyes, and wonders was he dream- 
ing ; touches and handles things without being able to prove their 
substance. Then reverts very often into his dream again, and 
murmurs this musical monologue : 

We look on that which cannot change — the One, 

The unborn and the undying. Earth and Ocean, 

Space, and the isles of life and light that gem 

The sapphire floods of interstellar air, 

This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, 

With all its cressets of immortal fire, 

Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably 

Against the escapade of boldest thoughts, repels them 

As Calpe the Atlantic clouds — this Whole 

Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers, 

With all the silent or tempestuous workings 

By which they have been, are, or cease to be, 

Is but a vision ; all that it inherits 

Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams ; 

Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less 

The future and the past are idle shadows, 

Of thought's eternal flight — they have no being 

Nought is but that which feels itself to be. 



24 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XXVIII. 

Recent researches in physiology throw considerable light on 
that favorite doctrine, or rather speculation, of poets and philoso- 
phers, Preexistence. It has haunted the imagination of men from 
the beginning of the world ; and shaped itself in all kinds of 
worthy and degrading assumptions. Like all other forms of 
mysticism, it had its cradle in the East; thence it shadowed itself 
on the great mind of Plato, under the form of anamnesis, or 
memory of former existence ; and in this shape it has become 
familiar to us through Shelley, who was a professed Platonist, 
and in the remarkable lines of Wordsworth, in his Intimations 
of Immortality : — 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar. 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home. 

But such hauntings as of a former existence are not limited to 
poets, whose minds are supersensitive to impressions. There are 
few persons, and these of dull metal, who are not sometimes 
startled by the vivid reminiscences which arise on visiting some 
strange place, which certainly they had never seen before. This 
feeling differs altogether from the sudden flashes of memory that 
are struck from hearing some old, familiar, but forgotten strain of 
music ; or from the sudden fragrance of a flower, or the grouping 
of clouds at sunset, or the ashen light of an October afternoon. 

It is a sudden sensation that some time in our lives we have been 
here, seen those objects, just as now they are pictured to our wak- 
ing vision. Nor is it the shadow cast by the vanishing skirts of a 
dream, vivid in its intensity, and which the waking brain fails to 
cast aside under the more imperious calls of reality. But there it 
is ; and we have been here before. How can we explain it? By 
the theory of double consciousness, and the unequal action, 
therefore the unequal sensitiveness of the two great factors, or 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 25 

lobes in the brain. We know now that these lobes can act quite inde- 
pendently of each other ; that one can display the greatest activity, 
whilst the other is torpid ; and that often, particularly under the 
pressure of necessity, the torpid, dormant lobe takes up its duties 
and emulates in its sensitiveness its more active brother. If we 
suppose, then, a person whose cerebral power is functionally im- 
paired by the imperfect interaction of the two lobes of the brain, 
coming suddenly upon a perfectly strange scene, the first impres- 
sion made upon the healthy-active lobe will be of perfect strange- 
ness and unfamiliarity. But in a short time the other lobe wakes 
up to active consciousness ; and the impressions made by the 
first are cast upon it, thus creating a reminiscence as of some- 
thing once and long ago experienced or seen. Alas ! that science 
should be so ruthless ; even though it has the honor of accommo- 
dating itself to scholastic and strictly logical reasoning. It is not 
the only case where the conclusions of science are at one with 
the venerable traditions of the Church. 



XXIX. 

This chain of thought which connects the conclusions of 
science with the traditions of the Church drags in another link 
out of the deep seas of speculation — the respective influences 
of Plato and Aristotle on the Scholastic teaching of the Church. 
There can hardly be a doubt that the former did hold sway through 
all the earlier centuries of the Church's existence, in the famous 
schools at Alexandria, along the Pontine shore, at Constantinople, 
and the cities of the Euxine Sea, until at last, after coloring with its 
poetry all the theology, philosophy and oratory of the East, it finally 
degenerated into the mysticism of the Neo-Platonists ; and Rome, 
ever watchful of the truth, had to step in, and check the degen- 
eration by recalling men's minds to fact and doctrine and away 
from dream and speculation. Yet, it always haunted the East 
with its poetic splendors, until the tremendous reaction of medi- 
aeval times towards the Aristotelian method of reasoning drove 
Platonism back into the shades of history and tradition. And 
from these mediaeval times downwards, the Aristotelian philoso- 
phy with its contempt for poetry, its hard, dry analysis, and the 



26 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

rigid formulism of the syllogism, has been accepted informally 
as the philosophic method of the Church. The Summa of St. 
Thomas, the impregnable bulwark of Catholic philosophic teach- 
ing, is founded on it. The spirit of the Stagyrite passed into the 
" dumb Sicilian ox," and through his mouth spoke to the world. 

XXX. 

There cannot, too, be the slightest doubt that, if the mission 
of the Catholic Church on earth be to teach truth, and guard the 
Divine Revelation, this is in reality the most effective and, we 
might say, Divinely-ordained means of doing so. There must be 
no question of poetry, rhetoric, or sophistry here. The graces 
of human eloquence, the lofty flights of poetry, the garlands and 
the flowers of human fancy, have their own place ; but they have 
no place here. Truth is naked ; the Clothier, Philosophy, which 
has always dominated the ideas of men, has nothing to say to the 
naked majesty of this heaven-sprung deity. So far, then, as the 
preservation or exposition of Truth goes, it is clear it must be 
couched in the strictest terminology ; and doctrine must be defined 
with as close a logical accuracy as human language, expressive 
of human ideas, will permit. Therefore, the syllogism and the 
definition are the only rhetorical embellishments theology, in its 
official form, can permit. Hence, for six hundred years the Aristo- 
telian method has prevailed in the schools of the Church. And 
it has been justified in its adoption by the fact that the moment the 
human mind broke away from it in that first disastrous Enthy- 
meme of Descartes : Cogito, ergo sum, it has drifted further and 
further away in the endless mazes of human speculation, until at 
last it completely lost itself in the visionary ideas of the German 
Pantheists, or the still worse, because more contemptuous, dog- 
maticism of French Encyclopaedists. In our own days, the world, 
emerging from the horrid labyrinths of rationalism and infidelity, 
is rubbing its darkened eyes ; and still blinded by the darkness, is 
only able as yet to declare in a dazed and despairful way : 

Behold, we know not anything ! 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 27 

XXXI. 

But now the question arises, whether in view of the world's 
awakening to the proximate and insistent issues that lie before it, 
it may not be well to reconsider our position ; and, bearing in 
mind the strong prejudices that still exist against Scholasticism, 
try to present our truths not as dry bones, but as clothed and liv- 
ing realities. This suggestion, of course, only applies to our pre- 
sentation of truth to the world. In our own colleges, there can 
be no great change from the rigid, logical method, because such 
method is preparatory and fundamental, and, therefore, strictly 
logical. But it is almost certain that we are on the eve of a tre- 
mendous reaction from agnosticism and materialism ; and conse- 
quently from the inductive system of logic that led mankind into 
the abyss. That reaction will not take place on logical lines of 
thought. The world is too tired of analysis to care for more. It 
will clamor for the poetic, for the ideal. We must do for it what 
the Greek Fathers and St. Augustine did for the peoples who 
were waking out of the horrible dreams of heathenism. For 
men not only reason, but feel. The higher aspirations must be 
fed, as well as the ratiocinative faculties. Mere logic never made 
a saint ; nor mere reasoning a convert. 

XXXII. 

Frederick Schlegel, I believe, says that every man is born a 
Platonist, or an Aristotelian. There is food enough for the latter. 
Why should the former be starved ? Goethe interprets the idea 
expressed in Raffaelle's famous picture of the school of Athens, 
where Aristotle is represented with his face bent to the earth, 
whereas Plato looks up to Heaven, thus : " Plato's relation to the 
world is that of a superior spirit, whose good pleasure it is to dwell 
in it for a time. He penetrates their depths, more that he may 
replenish them from the fulness of his own nature, than that he 
may fathom their mysteries." It is quite true his doctrines of ema- 
nation, preexistence, and innate ideas cannot now be held by a 
child of the Church ; but he so far foreshadowed the cardinal 
doctrines of Christianity, that it is not difficult to accept the tradi- 



28 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

tion that he sat at the feet of the prophet Jeremias in India ; im- 
possible to disbelieve that the whole of the Jewish or rather 
Judaic theology was known to him. The existence of the Word, 
a triune Divinity, the nothingness of life, the immortality of the 
soul, the rejection of Deities, the acceptance of Monotheism, the 
refutation of Atheism, the existence of great principles and eternal 
laws of right or wrong, as apart from utilitarian ideas of happi- 
ness or comfort — all these he taught with the emphasis of a Doctor 
of the Church. And he seems to have refuted the agnosticism 
of his own day, by his constant appeal to the demonstrations and 
axioms of geometry as certainties that can be known. His most 
modern admirer, Dr. Whewell, puts his case strongly : 

" It was these truths which really gave origin to sound phil- 
osophy, by exhibiting examples of certain truths. They refuted 
the scepticism which had begun to cry out, Nothing can be known, 
by saying in a manner which men could not deny, T/iis can be 
known ! In like manner they may refute the scepticism which 
says, we can know nothing of God, by saying we knotv this of God, 
that necessary truths are true to Him" 

Alas for Plato ! and alas for Dr. Whewell ! Down come 
John Stuart Mill and Sir John Herschel ; and shatter the theory 
of Necessary Truths to atoms ! And so the fabric of philosophy 
is Tennyson's fabled city, 

. built to music, 
And therefore never built at all, 
' And therefore built forever. 



XXXIII. 

There can be no doubt that whatever be said of his philosophy 
he has exercised a wider and deeper influence on human thought 
than any other seer of ancient or modern times. He was regarded 
as an apostle by the early Fathers. Justin Martyr, Jerome, and 
Lactantius speak of him as the greatest of philosophers. Augus- 
tine traces half his conversion to him. The whole Eastern Church, 
especially the Church of Clement and Origen at Alexandria, hold 
him in deepest reverence. Amongst modern thinkers, Emerson 
traces his direct influence in Boethius, Erasmus, Locke, Alfieri, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 29 

Coleridge, Copernicus, Newton, Goethe, Sir Thomas More, Henry 
More, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, etc., besides the host of minor 
philosophers and major poets who have taken their inspiration from 
him. Dante, whilst praising Aristotle as the " Master of those 
who know," borrows largely and without acknowledgment from 
Plato ; for what is his famous vision of the " singing suns " : 

lo vidi piu fulgor vivi e vincenti 
Far di noi centro e di se'far corona, 
Piii dolci in voce che in vista lucenti. 

Poi, si cantando, quegli ardenti soli 
Si fur girati intorno a noi tre volte, 
Come stelle vicine ai fermi poli. 

Paradiso, Canto X, 64-76. 

but the " wheel with eight vast circles of divers colors, and in the 
circles eight stars fixed ; and, as the spindle moved they moved 
with it ; and in each circle a syren stood, singing in one note, and 
thus from the eight stars arose one great harmony of sound?" 3 

XXXIV. 

Nor should it be forgotten that it was Averroes, the first of 
the European pantheists, that introduced the Aristotelian system 
into Europe; that if Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Proclus 
were fanatics and dangerous ones, Plutarch and Boethius were 
also Platonists ; that many commentators in more recent times 
regard the Platonic doctrines of emanation, preexistence and pla- 
netary souls as poetic conceptions, not doctrinal teachings, for 
Plato, though he despised poets, like Homer, and would give them 
no place in his Republic, was essentially a poet himself and of a 
high order; and it must not also be forgotten that it was 
Descartes, now regarded as the parent of all modern agnosticism, 
who gave the deathblow to Realism, and established that Nomi- 
nalism, of which Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume were sub- 
sequent exponents. The truth is that Platonism has got an evil 
reputation from the excesses of its interpreters, especially the Neo- 

8 Republic, Book X. 



30 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Platonists. Yet it is at least doubtful whether the Mysticism into 
which they dragged the doctrines of their Master was not a less 
dangerous form of heresy than that world-wide materialism, with 
which we have to contend, and of which Plato was, and is, the 
most successful antagonist. 

XXXV. 

But the truth appears to be that Platonism, which has an evil 
sound, owing to the excesses of its followers and commentators, 
has had at all times a great influence in the formation of thought. 
St. Thomas made Dante a philosopher ; but Plato made Dante a 
poet. But, setting aside the names of founders of systems, and 
regarding only the development of doctrine, it would seem an 
opportune time to place before the world what some would call 
the transcendental, others the ethico-intellectual side of Catho- 
licity. And whilst St. Thomas' Sumnta reigns supreme in the 
schools as the system of sound philosophy, there can be no reason 
why St. Augustine and the Greek Fathers in theology; Dante and 
Calderon in poetry; the Schlegels in literature; St. Teresa, St. John 
of the Cross, St. Francis of Assisi in ascetic science ; and such 
moderns as Balmez, Dalgairns, Faber, Gratry, etc., in popularized 
philosophy, should not be put forward to represent the more 
attractive phases of Christian science. The poorer classes have 
our churches and music ; the artists our galleries, and all the 
poetry of our faith frozen in eternal marble, or frescoed in ever- 
lasting colors ; musicians have all the divine delights of Mozart, 
Handel, Haydn, in Masses and Oratorios ; but tU cfrovel avveroL? 
in modern language and with modern adaptations ? The student 
who, some day, will take down Suarez's Metaphysics and give it to 
the world in strong, resonant, rhythmical English, will be one of 
the intellectual leaders of his generation. 

XXXVI. 

God holds in His hands the balance of the Universe. The 
Church on earth holds the balance of truth. The equilibrium of 
the former is disturbed by a feather's weight ; that of the latter by 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 3 1 

a word, a syllable, a vowel. I cast a stone into the sea, and its 
fall is felt on far and unknown shores. I utter one word ; it touches 
for good or evil souls as yet unborn or unconceived. There 
appears to be but a hair's breadth of difference between the 
sensism of Locke and St. Thomas' theory of the Origin of Ideas. 
The hair's breadth swells to the yawning chasm of Truth and 
Un-Truth. The ravings of a Neo-Platonist and the mysticism of 
St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross seem the same. They are as 
far apart as the poles. And between that sense of the Infinite, the 
realization of God's Presence, the light touch of His hand, the 
breathing of the Spirit, the parting in the cloud, and the Intellectual 
Intuition of Schelling, by which reason knows the Absolute, 
because itself is the Absolute, and the Absolute can only exist as 
known by reason ; how slender the verbal difference, how wide 
apart the faith and common-sense of one from the philosophical 
delirium of the other ! And how necessary that infallible magis- 
terium that is forever checking the turbulent and riotous waves of 
thought with its imperious command : " Thus far shalt thou come, 
and no farther." 

XXXVII. 

It is Vico who says : 

' ' God is to the world what the soul is to the body ! ' ' 

As an analogy or comparison, Yes ! As a fact, No ! You cannot 
call God the Anima Mundi or the Forma Mundi. But you can 
mount up from the consciousness of the Ego and its powers, and 
even its limitations, by a strict, severe analogy, to the idea of God ; 
the Finite cannot evolve the Infinite, but it suggests it. And 
granted the immateriality of the soul, you leap at once to the idea 
of the Infinite Mind — God. Cogito, ergo sum! said the soldier- 
philosopher. Cogito, ct volo y ergo sum supra cognitionem et voliti- 
onem, says the Christian thinker. 

It is quite certain that no organ can command or control it- 
self. The heart, the liver, the lungs, are mostly automatic. They 
are beyond the power of will in their operations. They work in 
obedience to a mysterious force, called Life. But the brain is not 



32 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

automatic in its workings. It is controlled from without. By 
what ? The ego, the soul, which thinks, acts, operates, controls, 
subdues, excites, mollifies ; or if it fails to do so, it is not so much 
through lack of will, though the will is weak, but because the in- 
strument is broken or passed beyond control. How marvellous 
is that power of volition to call up the faculty of memory ! An 
instant, and lo ! the great map of the past is unrolled ; and there, 
in indelible ink, is the diorama of our life, or any section of our 
life. Faces, scenes, works, words, touches, looks, sounds, odors — 
all gleam out in the clear handwriting of the past ; and, as we 
will, or when the obedient instrument we command is weary, we 
fold up the map again and put it away, secure that neither time 
nor trial shall dim their colors, or cause their sweet associations 
to cease. 

XXXVIII. x 

Frankenstein constructed a monster; but he failed to give him 
a soul. He gave him brain, intellect, mind ; but it remained a 
mere mechanical toy. It was corporeal, intellectual, sensitive, 
passionate, swayed by emotions, a prey to terrors, or what is 
worse than terror, the power to create it. But it was irresponsi- 
ble. Its greatest crime could not be imputed to it, because it 
had no soul ; and no frame-builder, however skilled of hand, or 
keen of mind, could ever pretend to give it. 



XXXIX. 

They who deny the existence of spirits deny the reality 
of other than organic life. Our idea of life is limited to certain 
organisms, frail and temporary, to some subtle influence that 
prevents them from falling into an inorganic condition ; and 
which gives them faculties and powers extremely limited in 
operation, yet with unquenchable aspirations after higher ideals. 
But, analyze as you will, this life, even in man, is but a force, sub- 
stantial in its immaterial essence though it be. To suppose that 
this is the only potentiality in the Universe, exercised in this 
humble and limited way, is nonsense. The same force must 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 33 

be exerted in far higher and loftier ways ; therefore in far higher 
and nobler beings, inorganic and incorporeal, but transcendently 
intellectual. 

XL. 

The automatic nerves in the spinal cord, motor and sensory, 
and the sympathetic nerves outside the cord are free from the 
operations of consciousness, and uncontrolled by them. Why- 
does not volition extend to them, i( volition is a mere develop- 
ment of nervous power ? Why is it limited to the cerebrum, and 
inoperative in the rest of the nervous system? If thought is 
only nerve-tension, and volition the same, why is thought local- 
ized in the brain, and even in different convolutions of the brain; 
although the physiologists have to admit the consensus of all 
parts of the brain to rational and consecutive thought ? 



XLI. 

I notice, too, that depression comes from dyspepsia, or soli- 
tude, or grief, or overwork. It is a functional brain-disease. The 
blood is impure in the capillaries, or some nerve, pneumogastric 
or other, is irritated, and sets up in the great ganglions irritation 
and consequent depression. Yet I can control it, and even banish 
it. By what? The mind. But it is the mind itself that is func- 
tionally disordered and made impotent and incapable. Then, by 
some power beyond the mind and independent of it in existence, 
if not by action. This is the " spark and divine potentiality of 
man," as the Mystics say: "The unlost and the inalienable noble- 
ness of man — that from which," as Pascal says, " his misery as 
well as his glory proceeds — that which must ever exist in hell, 
and be converted into sorrow there." The King in exile, warring- 
with rebellious subjects, recalling lost royalties with pain or re- 
morse, yet never abdicating or sacrificing the majesty of his 
heritage, but ever dreaming of the restoration of his kingdom 
and his throne — even such is, or should be, the mighty soul in 
its disenthronement. 



34 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XLIL 

If Idealism cannot be accepted as a rational scheme, or ex- 
planation, of the phenomena of thought, sensism is still more 
burdened with difficulties which admit of no explanation. For 
when you have pursued its operations to their remotest end, you 
have still the difficulty of attention to explain ; and a hundred 
other questions confront you that can only be interpreted by 
fresh creations of the imagination. In fact, when you have 
reached the terminus of physiological operations, you cannot go 
further in your research after the ever-vanishing and elusive 
mystery of thought, without creating or imagining a soul. I sit 
here in my garden, talking with a friend. I am absorbed in con- 
versation ; but my eyes are fixed not on the face of my com- 
panion, but on that flower that burns itself on the retina of my 
eye, though ten feet away in its bed. Its color and form imprint 
themselves, after passing through the canal of the eye, on the 
retina. They touch the optic nerve, and are carried along the 
electric wire of the nerve, until they reach their term, and paint 
themselves on the sensorium of the brain. They cannot go 
further. That operation of vision, physiologically considered, is 
perfected. The object is imprinted on the brain as clearly as my 
seal is imprinted on the hot sealing wax. Yet I do not see that 
flower. I am so absorbed in this conversation with my friend that 
I no more perceive that tulip than I see the roses of the Gardens 
of Shiraz. 

XLIII. 

But, suddenly, yes, I see it ! I see its red and yellow colors 
and its chalice shape. How? By what new operation? The 
sensorium of the brain has already been reached, touched, and 
affected by the image cast from the rays of light which has 
proceeded from the flower. What new faculty has been brought 
into operation ? Clearly nothing cerebral or even physical. 
Something has suddenly swooped down upon that material 
representation, looked at it, studied it, seen it, recognized it. 
Before that moment of recognition, the image was there as 
clearly as after its discovery. But it was unseen, unknown, un- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 35 

recognized. Who is the mysterious discoverer ? Who has seen 
into the tiny caverns of the brain, and studied just at that point 
of light at the end of the optic nerve that brightly-colored pic- 
ture ? Another cerebral faculty ? Impossible. The cells of the 
brain are imbedded with their mysterious faculties in their own 
matrices, nor can they move nor be moved, from place to place, 
by their own automatic power, or by secret energies. Each cell 
has its own energy, its own faculty, its own operation. It can- 
not come forth from its setting to gaze at pictures, or hear sounds 
in other places. Clearly, then, the faculty of attention or observa- 
tion must be an independent faculty, to move hither and thither 
on its mysterious mission. It must be a swift and subtle faculty 
to pass from sensorium to sensorium with the rapidity of light. 
It must be an imperious and arbitrary faculty, for there is no dis- 
puting its demands, if the instrument is still unbroken. Memory 
must give up its secrets, and unfold its maps of persons, land- 
scapes, sounds, sensations, pleasures, pains, — at its behest. It 
groups sensations, past, present, and future, together, and forms 
ideas and principles from their collation. It grasps facts of the 
external world — takes them from natural history, from human 
history, from art, from science, and builds up systems, from which 
in turn it takes principles of guidance, — synthesizing, analyzing, 
weaving, unweaving across the woof of the brain the webs of 
fancy or the tapestry of thought; and all this wonderful and 
miraculous work is the result of that secret and celestial mechan- 
ism—the cell ? No ! the Soul ! 



XLIV. 

But there is something more. There is a sister faculty, under 
that Mother-Soul, whose power is still more surprising. Volition 
is greater than intellect, for intellect may stimulate volition, but 
volition commands intellect. And if the doctrine of mere sensism 
cannot account for thought, still less can it account for that mys- 
terious faculty which dominates thought and sense equally. If 
all movements of thought and will were obedient to sense, what 
hogs from the sty of Epicurus would we be ! What room would 
there be for all those superhuman deeds that have gilded the 



3$ UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

otherwise sombre pages of human history? How would you 
explain the nobility of Abraham, as with uplifted knife, and 
with all the instincts of nature protesting, he sought to immolate 
his son at the command of God? Or the courage of a David 
facing the maniac Saul ? Or the heroism of a Scaevola, a 
Brutus, a Cato, a Germanicus ? Or the patriotism of a Hofer or 
a Tell ? And how would you explain the filling of sandy deserts 
with converted voluptuaries from Athens, and Alexandria, and 
Rome ? Or of a Stylites on his lonely pillar, or the unnumbered 
martyrs who gave up their lives as witnesses to the Unseen ? If 
sense alone created thought, or governed will, how will you 
explain this revolt against all its arbitrary dictates? Is it not 
more reasonable to accept the existence of a superior faculty, that, 
strengthened and enlightened from above, can trample the senses 
beneath its feet, and compel to action on far higher and loftier 
principles than either sense or reason could suggest ? 

XLV. 

But how pitiful is the soul in its imprisonment ! How sad to 
see so noble a creation, with all its tremendous aspirations and 
possibilities, dependent for its knowledge on the tiny miniatures 
of external things cast upon one pin-point of the cerebral sub- 
stance ; and on the other hand, eternally fretted by the rebellion 
of those very senses which are its ministers and slaves. Now 
and again, in moments of inspiration, it seems to emancipate itself 
from these trammels of flesh and to soar out and beyond its prison. 
Saints have experienced this in their ecstasies, poets in their 
dreams. It comes to some souls in the flush of early morning 
with the songs of newly awakened birds, and the smell of wet 
woods ; and it comes at eventide with the saffron skies, and the 
slow death of day. It is at these times that the soul is not so 
much lifted up towards God, as driven to drag down heaven and 
God to earth. It seems to fling its arms around Infinity and to 
embrace it, and be lost in it. The rapture lasts but for one 
moment, whilst the soul feels unutterable things. Then once 
more it sinks back into its prison, and drags after it the heavy 
chain. No wonder that St. Paul, raised to the third heaven, and 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 37 

then lowered to earth, should cry from his exile and banishment: 
" Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo ! " 



XLVL 

How keenly that great saint discovered the workings of the 
spirit is evidenced by that one expression : " We know in part ; 
and we prophesy in part. We now see through a glass in an 
obscure manner ; but then face to face. Now I know in part ; 
but then I shall know even as I am known." It is like an inter- 
pretation of the shadow on the wall in Plato's cave. But what a 
boundless horizon of knowledge it opens up after death. " Face 
to face." No longer through the dusk and shadowy intermediary 
of sense ; but confronting the reality, seeing all around it, and 
through it, and beyond it, discerning the nonmena beneath the 
phenomena of things, and grasping firmly those shadowy and 
elusive pictures of substance and form, and space and time and 
infinity. What a revelation it will be ! And what an eternity of 
happiness, in forever seeking after and finding the eternal and 
immutable truths, manifested in the vision of God. 

XLVII. 

But how do we touch the extremes ? " The personal ego," as 
Maine de Biran says, " in whom all begins, and the personal God 
in whom all ends." Where is the chain that links these vast 
extremes of eternity ? Let us see. The main organs of the body 
are automatic, but governed by a mysterious something called 
Life. The worlds of the universe are automatic, but governed by 
a mysterious something called Law. But Life is governable by 
volition that can conserve or destroy within limitations ; and Law 
is governed by the Supreme Will that can suspend or direct it at 
pleasure. The organic body and the inorganic universe ; Life in 
the former, Law in the latter. The human volition controlling 
Life ; the Divine volition evolving Law — there is a perfect analogy, 
so far as the limitations of a Finite and the absoluteness of an 
Infinite Being are concerned. 



38 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XLVIIL 

It is a curious law of our intellectual being — that by which we 
are perpetually striving to unify all laws, and to seek after a First 
Principle. In the laboratory the scientist is forever seeking after 
the one great science which is to harmonize all former discoveries, 
and make future experiments more easy and more successful by 
the application of one great principle. Poets, too, have dreamed 
of this eternal and unique One. 

The One remains ; the many change and pass. Philosophers 
have veiled their dim consciousness of it under the name of the 
Unconditioned and Absolute. But the higher the scientist, the poet, 
and the philosopher go in their speculations, the nearer they find 
themselves to the principle of Unity. Yet it is ever elusive and 
unattainable, vanishing at the moment of touch, then reappearing 
in the eternal and unquenchable passion of human striving after a 
unity of law, of principle, of origin, of all things that pass under 
the names of human cognitions or mental concepts. And, so that 
One forever remains as an eternal and irrefragable principle of 
philosophic thought, beyond knowledge, but not beyond reason 
or belief — accessible to thought as a principle — inaccessible in its 
attributes and modes ; the dread reality of the humble and devout ; 
the persistent and unwelcome visitant, which haunts the brain of 
the unbelieving and tortures it with its presence, without revealing 
its identity or the conditions of its being. 



XLIX. 

There is nothing very original in this idea. Poets have sung it ; 
philosophers have analyzed or explained it ; saints have traced all 
truth and love to the single truth — God exists ! and the single but 
sublime oracle — God is Love ! The conception of the ideal Good, 
Beauty, Truth, involves that Unity which is the essence of all Good- 
ness, Beauty and Truth. It is what Carlyle, unable to cast into 
concrete shape the thoughts that were floating vaguely before his 
mind, called the Eternal Verities ; it is what St. Anselm, centuries 
before, called the aliquid unum y quod sive essentia, sive natura, sive 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 39 

substantia, dicitur, optimum et maximum est, et summum omnium 
quae sunt. \Monologium^\ 

I heard a Tantum Ergo this morning in the convent chapel at 
Benediction. Thought floated with the sound, and carried me out 
and out beyond earth to the choirs of the Seraphic Spirits. Music 
is the " Lost Chord " that has strayed hither from heaven. If one 
or two mortals on this grain of sand in the Universe can produce 
such ravishing melody, what imagination can reach the faintest 
outer bounds and limits of the harmonies that breathe before 
the throne of God from the vast choirs of all the Spirits of the 
Universe ! 

L. 

" Man is the supreme product of Nature," says the evolution- 
ist. " He is the crown and glory of the universe ; the apex to 
which the vast cycles have tended and terminated." Well, then, 
why did evolution stop at man ? He is by no means a perfect 
creature. Even his supreme vanity will admit that. But he is 
now on this planet, in his evolved state, some thirty thousand 
years since the day he ceased to be simian, or pithecanthropic, 
and became anthropic in his fulness. It was a slow evolution, 
for we have no records of him beyond six thousand years ; nor 
have we any proof that he is advancing. Or, if so, whither, and 
in what way, shall he develop ? Will he put on the wings of 
angels, or sprout the plumes of cherubs ? Will he conquer 
death, and soar, with glorified body, into the empyrean ? Or, 
remaining human, will he exterminate disease, extirpate vice, make 
life one long summer, and banish disease and misery? Will 
the vale of tears become a valley of rejoicing to the perfectly- 
evolved humanity? 



LI. 

Evolution is no new doctrine. It is only English vanity that 
imputes its discovery to Darwin. It is as old as Democritus ; it 
was understood by St. Augustine; it is embodied in the "endless 
vortices" of Descartes; it is identical with the monad theory of 



40 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Leibniz ; it is everywhere taught by Schelling. But all admit 
that it is neither a continuous operation, nor a uniform one. 
Nature leaps a chasm here and there, and creates new species, 
which appear to have no connection with those that are left be- 
hind. But let us suppose that the process of evolution was per- 
fect, that link was knit to link in the great chain ; how is it ex- 
plained that the mighty process was suddenly stopped at man ? 
He has had plenty of time to have evolved into something 
higher. The lower forms did not require so much time to 
develop into the higher; and there is less difference, therefore 
less of a leap of life and progress, between a man and an angel 
than between an ape and a man. Yet, nature stands still. Con- 
fucius was as wise as Plato ; and Plato greater than Herbert 
Spencer. Or, is nature, like the mighty suns, going to take a 
leap backward now? Has she ceased to expand, and has the pro- 
cess of recession begun ? And, descending the ladder of creation, 
is she about to step down from species to species, into the vege- 
table organism, thence into the molecule, the monad, the atom 
again ? 

LII. 

Our great mistake is, not in arguing by analogy, but in not 
pushing analogy far enough in its widest, most expansive sense. 
One argues about the infinity of inhabited worlds; but forgets 
that these worlds must be inhabited by beings as different from 
us as their suns and planets differ from ours. Our sun is but a 
third-rate star ; our planet but a minor off-shoot of nebulae. If 
all the suns of space have their planets (as we might assume), these 
latter must have intelligent, self-conscious inhabitants; but if 
these suns are vastly greater than ours and differ in constitution, 
density, and brilliancy, so, too, must their satellites differ from 
our satellites, and their inhabitants from us, until we can not only 
imagine, but reason about beings as vastly superior to us in intel- 
lect, as we suppose angelic intelligences to be ; and according to 
the density of their sphere becoming more and more immaterial, 
and therefore less liable to dissolution, until at last we touch on 
the subtlety and swiftness, the nobility and spirituality of our 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 41 

angels; so that we ascend by the strictest analogy of evolution 
from the dual nature of man to purely spiritual creations, ascend- 
ing higher and higher in the scale of intellectuality and subtlety, 
until we touch the fringe of that sea of Spirits that undulates 
within the precincts of heaven ; and there, mount, higher and 
higher, until we reach the nine orders in all their transcendent 
beauty and perfection, culminating in the glories of the Arch- 
angels, who stand sentinels before the "great white throne"; 
where, suddenly, we are smitten back to earth by beholding in 
the innermost sanctuary of the Most High, the Hierarchy of the 
Incarnation, close by the enveiled Majesty of Him, "whose throne 
is darkness," and yet " enveloped in light as with a garment." 



LIIL 

But all this only argues the existence of demigods. So said 
Mill about the cosmological argument of the schools. But even 
on the theories of the evolutionists we cannot stop here. Not 
only as a fact in esse, but as a fiction, yet a logical fiction of pure 
thought, as an intellectual concept arising from a strict intellectual 
process, evolution cannot stop except with God. You must 
either accept the Christian idea of God, as originator of the uni- 
verse, or God as its ultimate development. He is either Alpha or 
Omega — the Being from whom all things derive their being ; or 
the Being in whom all things terminate, or, according to the Pau- 
line idea — both. For if matter is eternal, it must have been 
developing and evolving its energies from eternity ; and conceding 
for a moment that nature can leap the chasm from the inorganic 
to the organic, we have at last, after countless cycles of years, 
and endless processes of evolution, this tiny being called Man. 
Man, the lowest type of rational creature we can conceive, is the 
ultimate development of the eternal processes of the suns. But 
man is only a quite recent triumph of evolution. Yesterday he 
was an ape, the day before a vegetable, the day before a gas ! 
Then what has Nature been doing from eternity ? Is this its 
highest result ? Nay, nay, says the agnostic, there must be higher 
natures than Man's, if matter, with all its potencies, has had eter- 
nity to work in. Then you admit the existence of angels ? Why 



42 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

not the existence of God ? The very imperfection of man argues 
a direct creation in what we call Time. 



LIV. 

Yes ! eternity supposes Infinity. An eternity of matter in 
perpetual repose, inert, inexpansive, unattractive, inoperative, we 
may conceive, but we know it to be impossible and non-existent. 
But a dead universe might still be regarded as of indefinite dura- 
tion and extent. But a Universe, like ours, in perpetual motion 
of dissolution and creation, of repulsion and assimilation, in a state 
of perpetual flux and motion, and with the one result of which 
we are most immediately cognizant, namely — ourselves, sentient 
and rational beings, demands or foreshadows Infinity. But this 
time, not the indefinite dead Universe, but an Infinite, if incom- 
prehensible, Mind. For if Mind proceeds from Matter, as Mate- 
rialists say, it is clear that the operation has not reached its term 
of possibilities in human intellect. That would be a poor result. 
But if it can reach higher, why has it not done so ? It has 
had all eternity to work in. Either, then, man is the supreme 
achievement of nature, or not. If he is, Nature, perfect in all its 
other operations, has failed here. If not, and if there be some 
higher possibilities, then the operations of Nature from all eternity 
must have produced Infinite Mind. Man can be explained by 
the theory of direct creation. He is unintelligible by the theory 
of evolution, except as a chance accident, flung from the crucible 
of being in a moment of lawless and misguided frenzy. But, 
this, too, won't do ; for law is paramount, and admits no errancy 
or arbitrariness. Then, you cannot assume the existence of man, 
except by direct creation ; for if he is the feeble and halting result 
of endless processes, working upwards from the womb of eternity, 
these endless processes in the infinitude of space would have 
developed something far greater and more worthy of such vast 
potencies and such illimitable areas of space and time. " Very 
well," says the evolutionist, " grant our theory, and we have no 
objection to your placing God at the end of the chain of ex- 
istence." But this won't answer, because, according to every 
axiom of philosophy, the conditioned can never develop into the 



UNDER THE CEDARS A. YD THE STARS. 43 

Absolute. We are face to face then with this dilemma — Man, the 
apex of creation, after countless millions of years ; and all the 
energies of nature working in an illimitable field ; or man, the 
handiwork of God, yet the lowest in the scale of rational beings. 
How absurd the former hypothesis — how simple and reasonable 
and free from embarrassment the latter. " Who hath wrought 
and done these things, calling the generations from the begin- 
ning ? I, the Lord ! I am the First and the Last ! " i 



LV. 

I think it is in Lewes' Biographical Dictionary of Philosophy 
the words occur : " I can say, Cogito, ergo sum ; I cannot say, 
Cogito, ergo Deus est!' 

Lewes had read the philosophers, but he was never admitted 
into the sacred circle. " He hath been to a great feast of thought, 
and he hath stolen the scraps." All men are agreed that the first 
proposition has been disastrous to human thought. But where 
comes in the unreason of the second proposition ? If you admit 
that man exists and thinks, you necessarily postulate the existence 
of Supreme Thought — that is, God. Descartes and his school 
would not accept for a moment that theory of modern Materialists 
— that thought, mind, soul, are purely material operations or 
functions. To them thought was evolved by will-power, itself 
immaterial, and its product became immaterial with it. Then you 
leap at once with the two concepts of Time and Space, as on two 
vast wings, to Supreme Immaterial and Inorganic Thought — that 
is, to God. The Finite can never develop into the Infinite, nor the 
Conditioned evolve into the Absolute. But it can prove it — nay, 
demand it. Once admit that thought is immaterial, although 
requiring an organic substance, in our conditions of being, to 
evolve it, and you reach, with one sweep of reason — the ultimate, 
as well as the principle of all thought — God ! On the one hand, 
man's very littleness, as unworthy of the dignity of the universe, 
foreshadows God ; and on the other, the grandeur of his im- 
material faculties demands and postulates Supreme Intelligence. 

4 Isaiah 41 : 4. 



44 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LVL 

Yet it is remarkable that the more spiritual or idealistic schools 
of German philosophy, represented by Hegel and Schelling, are 
completely at issue with this logical deduction from modern 
materialism. Their programme in the Critical Journal asserts 
that the " great immediate interest of philosophy is to put God 
again absolutely at the head of the system as the one ground of 
all, the principium essendi et cognoscendi, after He has been for a 
long time placed, either as one infinitude alongside of other infini- 
tudes, or at the end of them all as a postulate — which necessarily 
implies the absoluteness of the finite." This reads like a sentence 
from some mediaeval Catholic philosopher, with its Scholastic 
terminology, until we see further into the Philosophy of Identity — 
a monistic system which, taking choice between God and the 
human mind, eliminates the former, or rather amalgamates 
both under the unmeaning word — Subject-Object. Then comes a 
schism ; and Hegel passes out into unknown barren deserts of the 
" Phenomenology of Spirit," and Schelling follows his spiritual 
Pantheism until, driven back by inexorable logic, he finds reason 
is God — the only God ; and God is reason — the spectre of itself 
cast by the retina of the soul on the background of Eternity. 

Here, too, again we notice one of the striking similarities 
between the systems and terminology of these stars of the outer 
darkness and our own great philosophical lights. For here Hegel 
breaks completely with Schelling, and gives a system of genetic 
philosophy in which he corresponds, word for word, and idea for 
idea, with St. Thomas, beginning with the lowest sensuous con- 
sciousness and working upwards through reason and experience 
to the highest speculative thought, and denying that any man has 
a right to impose his own intuitions, or what he conceives to be 
his visions, on the acceptance of the world ; whilst Schelling re- 
duces all apprehension of truth to each individual's consciousness, 
or his intuitive perception of all human verities. 

LVII. 

The voice of nature is a voice of loneliness — the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness. The infinite pathos of suffering seems 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 45 

to be everywhere. The autumn winds moaning in the crevices 
of chimneys ; the deep, sad monotone of the sea ; the weary 
plash of rain in the night; the sound of the waterfall from afar; 
the voice of rivers, deepened from the babble of streams ; the moan 
of the storm in the leafless trees ; even the zephyrs amongst the 
young leaves of spring; — all have an undertone of sadness, as 
if they too felt the " burden and the weight of all the unintelligible 
world." And here this evening I start and shudder under the 
" eldritch light " of an autumn sunset, at the 

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds 
Of undistinguishable motion, steps 
Almost as silent as the turf they trod. 

It is only the gentle susurrus of the evening breeze, and the zip ! 
zip! of a red leaf falling into its brown grave. I saw it in the 
springtime, when it gradually unfolded from its cradle ; and ful- 
filling the universal law, expanded its tiny silken gloss to the sun- 
light. I saw it, again by the universal law, attacked by parasites, 
which clung to its pale under-side, and left a brown mark of decay 
after them ; I saw it tossed on the storm, wooed by the zephyr, 
wet with the weeping of the rain and the tears of the dew, shaken 
by the wanton, careless bird, caressed by the sun, pallid beneath 
the moon ; and now comes its turn, as of all things, to die and 
fall, and pass into the inorganic kingdom again. But its last sound 
on earth startled me with its fluttering farewell, and its silent 
reminder : Thou too shalt pass. It is the law. 

LVIII. 

We had a terrific magnetic storm last night. Wise people 
who understand the eternal laws of Nature, and the marvellous 
interdependence of suns and planets, foresaw it. For there were, 
all this year, spots in the sun, great rents in the photosphere here 
and there, into whose horrible jaws you might fling thousands of 
pebbles, such as this little earth of ours, without the chance of 
satiating them. So I told my little children in the convent schools 
here. They received the information with a smile of pitying in- 
credulity. Then there were some magnificent Auroras, up there 



46 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

in hyperborean regions — great plumes of light cast up from an 
unseen cauldron in the blazing heavens, and stretched out in a 
great fan of colors, frail and iridescent as a rainbow's. So we said 
to ourselves : Something is coming. This is but the stage scenery. 
When will the performance commence ? Sure enough, yesterday 
afternoon there were some deep grumblings in that half bronze, 
half copper sky, which always holds in its hollows untold terrors. 
These were the prelude to the mighty nocturnal oratorio of the 
heavens. It commenced, as oratorios do, ever so softly and gently, 
a mere susurrus of sound, echoed down along the bases of the 
black mountains and fading away to invisible distances. But every 
two seconds the sky was a sheet of blue flame, fitful and flicker- 
ing, and yet broad and deep and permanent enough to show every 
outline — leaf, and bough, and trunk, of the belt of forest trees 
opposite my window, and every ripple in the. river beneath. There 
was no sleeping now. I arose. So did every one in the village 
except the little children in their innocence, who slept right 
through the storm ; and a tramp, who was drunk. I lighted my 
candle, and tried to read. It was useless. Those broad, blue 
flashes, flickering like swallows' wings across my windows, forbade 
it. There was nothing for it but to witness in awe and with 
strained nerves the explosion in fire and fury of the elements of 
heaven. 

LIX. 

Then it struck me that my stables were in danger. I passed 
out into the yard to examine them ; and so powerful is the force 
of imagination, I distinctly saw fire flickering across the ridges of 
some thatched roofs outside my garden walls. Next day, I was 
surprised to find that these cottages were not burned to the ground. 
I returned, and sat patiently watching the play of the electric 
fluid across the heavens and athwart the landscape. Hitherto, no 
rain had fallen ; but about two a.m. the flashes became more fre- 
quent, as if the whole heavens were a tremendous battery, belch- 
ing out blue flame at every moment. And the deep diapason of 
the thunder came nearer, and broke in deeper and longer volleys, 
reverberating across the valley, and shattered against the black 
mountains far away. The strain became severe ; and I prayed 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 47 

for one drop of rain to certify that nature was melting away in 
its own terrific anger. But not a drop, only the swift wings of 
light beating across sky and earth, and the deep growl of the 
thunder coming nearer and nearer. Up to this the town was as 
still as death, — still with the silence under which all souls are 
hushed in terror, as if there were no escape, and nothing re- 
mained but to wait and pray. About three o'clock, however, as 
the storm deepened in intensity, a poor half-demented creature 
rushed wildly into the streets and cried : " The town is on fire ! 
the town is on fire ! " It was ghastly, that lonely cry in the still- 
ness and dread. 



LX. 

It was so like the cry of the angels who abandoned Jerusa- 
lem in the crisis of its fate : Let us go hence ! Let us go hence ! 
But a more startling sound struck the ears of the trembling peo- 
ple. Two poor jennets, who had been out feeding on the high- 
ways in defiance of the law, tore madly across the bridge and 
into the streets, screaming madly in terror ; and their cry resem- 
bled so exactly the wail of women, despairing and stricken, that 
it seemed for a moment as if the whole town had gone mad from 
fright and rushed like maniacs abroad. At last, about four a.m., 
a few drops of rain fell and I said, thank God ! But the storm 
was reaching its climax. The blue flashes, broad and gleaming, 
gave way before the terrific artillery that now broke right above 
our heads ; and great blood-red and forked javelins of fire stab- 
bed here and there through the inky blackness. It was horrible 
— those fire missiles flung at us we know not from where, and 
running zigzag now in the heavens above, now on the earth 
beneath ; and after every flash such a crash of thunder that one 
could well believe that the end of all things had come ; that the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up ; and that Earth and 
Heaven were rushing together pell-mell into chaos. And the 
one hope was that the rain was now pouring in a deluge from 
the skies ; and the plash from roof and housetop and gully was 
almost equal in horror to the weird music in the heavens. At 
last, about 4.30 a.m., there was a flash of blinding light, as if hell 



48 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

had opened and shut, then a moment's pause ; and then such a 
snarl of sound overhead, such a malignant fiendish growl as of 
a 1 thousand maddened beasts, that I involuntarily put my fingers 
in my ears and murmured : Eleison ! It was the last bar in the 
great oratorio of the heavens. The sounds rumbled and died far 
down on the edges of the horizon ; the skies cleared ; and nought 
was heard, only the unseen cataracts pouring down their floods 
from the broken reservoirs of Heaven. 

A few days later I read, with surprise, that this frightful cata- 
clysm was limited to a narrow belt of atmosphere, not half a 
mile in depth. Beyond and above, the eternal stars shone peace- 
fully. 

LXI. 

About six o'clock the evening before the storm, a tramp came 
into my garden, where I was reading. My servant said : A gen- 
tleman wanted to see me ! So I said : Send him up ! We are so 
polite in Ireland that everyone is a gentleman or a lady, when 
they are not noblemen. I saw at a glance at his boots that he 
was a tramp. Now, I like tramps, just as I like everything plane- 
tary and wandering. It is because I am such a precisian, that I 
could not sit down to dinner if a picture was hung awry, or a 
book misplaced on a shelf, that I love irregularities in others. A 
piece of torn paper on my carpet will give me a fit of epilepsy ; 
but I can tranquilly contemplate the awful chaos of another's 
study, and even congratulate him on his splendid nerves. So 
tramps, comets, variable stars, wandering lights of philosophy, 
stars of the outer darkness, flotsam and jetsam of heaven and 
earth, — I have a curious sympathy with them all, as fate or for- 
tune blows them about in eccentric orbits. This wayfarer told 
me he was from my native town (which was a lie) ; that he was a 
tradesman out of employment (which was another) ; that he was 
hungry and thirsty (which was half-and-half). I gave him six- 
pence, which he instantly transmuted into whiskey. Then he lay 
down under an open archway; and slept all through that 
terrific storm. I have no doubt but that the electric fluid shot 
through that open arch again and again, during the night ; but 
the Eudaemon, who presides over drunken people, warded off the 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 49 

bolts. He woke next morning, stiff, but sound and whole ; and 
was utterly amazed at the universal consternation. And there 
are people in the world still, who say that drink is an unmitigated 
evil. 

LXII. 

It has often occurred to me that the revelations of Christianity 
upon human beliefs had much the same effect as fire upon 
invisible ink. All the vague, shadowy credences of humanity 
broadened out and glowed in intense light, the outlines of which 
no longer faded away into undefined and conjectural speculations ; 
but became clearly edged and marked, and indelible. The 
Elohim drew together and became God, the Spirit. All the 
ancient trinities — Hindu, Egyptian, or Greek, were defined and 
determined in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And 
that apotheosis of man, and his supreme excellence, which has 
always haunted human thought with such a suggestion of pride, 
that it has created gods after its own image, — reversing the process 
of creation, — was almost realized when the "Word was made 
Flesh, and dwelt amongst us. 1 ' And there it remains — this 
supreme Theogony of Christian revelation. The ever-rebellious 
mind of man has striven to dissolve it again into the old shadows 
of verbal abstractions and lofty unrealities. But never again shall 
the supreme revelation be disturbed. It is written in God's hand- 
writing; and chisel or acid cannot impair its outlines. It is 
revealed in words that shall not pass, even though the earth, like 
a worn garment, be cast aside and changed ; and the Heavens, 
like a reader's scroll of parchment, be folded up and hidden away 
in the archives of eternity. 

LXIII. 

Hence, human pride is forever revolting against this revelation. 
The unrestrained intellect is forever beating its wings against this 
wall of brass, that marks its limitations. It would so like to go 
out, and wander at its own sweet will across the deserts of the 
Universe, and build its own idols, as the Israelites, even under 
God's very eye, built their simulacra of gold and silver, and said 



50 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

they were their gods. Human folly is never at an end. It only 
takes different modes and shapes. When one thinks of the orgies 
of the French Revolution, and the apotheosis of Reason under 
the vilest form conceivable, it seems not too far-fetched to predict 
that modern civilization may yet revert to the gods of Greece 
and Rome. 

LXIV. 

And, then, when it has wallowed in the sink and sty of 
uncleanness, its old God-like aspirations, stifled but not extin- 
guished by pride and sensuality, will revive ; and it will come back 
once again to the sweetness and dignity, the celestial graces and 
eternal hopes of Christianity. There it will find peace, " clothed 
in its right mind " for a time ; until the untamable spirit clamors 
again for the fierce liberties of untrammelled thought and un- 
limited license ; and leaves its vale of Tempe for the howling 
desert, and the turbid waters of Marah. 



LXV. 

What a wonderful camera is the mind ! The sensitized plate 
can only catch the material picture painted by the sunlight. The 
tabula rasa of the mind can build or paint its own pictures from 
the black letters of a book. Here is a little series that crossed the 
diorama of imagination this afternoon. A great bishop, reading 
his own condemnation from his pulpit, and setting fire with his 
own hand to a pile of his own books there upon the square of his 
cathedral at Cambrai; and then constructing out of all his wealth 
a monstrance of gold, the foot of which was a model of his 
condemned book, which he thus placed under the feet of Christ, 
so that every time he gave Benediction, he proclaimed his own 
humiliation. 

LXVI. 

Number two picture is that of a great preacher of world-wide 
reputation, going down into the crypts of the cathedral that was 
still echoing with the thunders of his eloquence ; and whilst the 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 5 1 

enthusiastic audience was filing from the doors, and every lip was 
murmuring: "Marvellous!" "Wonderful," "Unequalled," strip- 
ping himself bare and scourging his shoulders with the bitter 
discipline, until it became clogged with his blood, he murmur- 
ing, as each lash fell : "Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam 
misericordiam tuamr 

LXVII. 

Number three is that of a lowly village church, hidden away 
from civilization in a low-lying valley in the south of France. It 
is crowded, it is always crowded, night and day ; and the air is 
thick with the respiration of hundreds of human beings, who 
linger and hover about the place, as if they could not tear them- 
selves away. No wonder ! There is a saint here. He is the 
attraction. It is evening. The Angelus has just rung. And a 
pale, withered, shrunken figure emerges from the sacristy and 
stands at the altar rails. Insignificant, old, ignorant, his feeble 
voice scarcely reaches the front bench. There is seated an 
attentive listener, drinking in with avidity the words of this old 
parish priest. He is clothed in black and white. He is the 
mighty preacher of Notre Dame, and he sits, like a child, at the 
feet of M. Vianney. 

LXVIII. 

Number four is a lonely chateau, hidden deep in the woods 
of France, away from civilization. It has an only occupant — a 
lonely man. He wanders all day from room to room, troubled 
and ill at ease. His mind is a horrible burden to himself. He is 
a sufferer from a spiritual tetanus. He cannot say : Peccavi ! nor 
Miserere ! He comes to die. Prayers are said for him in every 
church and convent in France. The Sister of Charity by his bed- 
side presents the last hope — the crucifix. He turns aside from 
the saving mercy and dies — impenitent. Three days later, after 
he has been buried, like a beast, without rites, his brother arrives 
in haste. The rooms are empty. The dead sleep on. The despair- 
ing and broken-hearted priest rushes from chamber to chamber, 
wringing his hands and crying : Oh, mon frere ! mon frere ! 



52 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LXIX. 

It is said, the brute creation knows not its power. If it did, 
it might sweep man from the earth. The same is said of woman ; 
the same of the Moslem, in reference to European civilization ; 
the same of the Tartar hordes. Might we not without disrespect 
say : The Catholic priesthood knows not its power. If it did, all 
forms of error should go down before it. The concentrated force 
of so many thousand intellects, the pick and choice of each nation 
under heaven, the very flower of civilization, emancipated, too, 
from all domestic cares, and free to pursue in the domains of 
thought that subject for which each has the greatest aptitude, 
should bear down with its energy and impetuosity the tottering 
fabrics of human ingenuity or folly. Here, as in most other 
places, are hundreds who, freed from the drudgery of great 
cities, the mechanical grinding of daily and uninspiring work, 
are at liberty to devote themselves to any or every branch of 
literature or science. They resemble nothing so much as the sen- 
tinels posted on far steppes on the outskirts of civilization, with no 
urgent duty except to keep watch and ward over tranquil, because 
unpeopled, wastes; and to answer, now and again from the guard 
on its rounds, the eternal question : " What of the night, watch- 
man ? Watchman, what of the night ? " " Ay," saith someone, 
pursuing the simile, " but suppose the guard finds the sentinel 
with a book, not a musket in his hands, what then ?" Well, then, 
the student-sentinel is promptly court-martialled and shot ! 

And it was of these, sentinels of the West, that the very unjust 
and bigoted Mosheim wrote : " These Irish were lovers of learn- 
ing, and distinguished themselves in these times of ignorance by 
the culture of the sciences beyond all the European nations ; the 
first teachers of the scholastic philosophy in Europe, and who, 
so early as the eighth century, illustrated the doctrines of religion 
by the principles of philosophy." 



LXX. 

The worst sign of our generation is not that it is stiff-necked, 
but that it wags the head and is irreverent. The analytical spirit 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 53 

has got hold of the human mind ; and will not leave it until the 
usual cycle of synthesis and faith comes back again. Outside 
the Church, I searched for it everywhere — this lost spirit of rever- 
ence. I sought it in the devout Anglican, hiding his face in his 
hat, as he knelt in his well-upholstered pew. Alas ! He was 
killing time in studying the name of its maker. I sought it 
among the philosophers, and found that from Diogenes down, 
they spat at each other from their tubs. I sought it, rather un- 
wisely, in criticism ; and found a good man saying that The 
Saturday Review temperament was ten thousand times more 
damnable than the worst of Swinburne's skits. I sought it, still 
more unwisely, in politics ; and read that a very great, good 
statesman would appoint the Devil over the head of Gabriel, if he 
could gain a vote by it. I went amongst my poets ; and heard 
one call another: "School-Miss Alfred, out-babying Words- 
worth and out-glittering Keats ; " and the babe replying : 

What — is it you 
The padded man that wears the stays — 

Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys 
With dandy pathos when you wrote ? 

A lion, you, that made a noise, 
And shook a mane, en papillotes. 

What profits now to understand 

The merits of a spotless shirt — 
A dapper boot — a little hand — 

If half the little soul is dirt ? 

A Timon you ! Nay, nay, for shame ! 

It looks too arrogant a jest ! 
The fierce old man — to take his name, 

You band-box. Off, and let him rest ! 

Then I went away. I passed by France, the cradle of irreverence, 
and went out from Occidental civilization. In the East, the land 
of the sun, the home of traditional reverences, the place of all 
dignity and ceremonial, where you put the shoes off your feet, 
and touch your forehead, and place the foot of your master on 
your head — here is reverence — the turning to Mecca, the kissing 



54 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of the black ruby 5 in its silver sheath in the Kaaba ; and the glory 
of being an El Hadj ; the drinking of the sacred fountain, Zem- 
Zem; the deep voice of the preacher: Labbaika! Allahamma! 
Labbaika! I entered a Turkish town in the evening. The natives 
had covered their garments under the ir'harn, the vestment of 
prayer ; the muezzins were calling from the minarets. I watched 
one — a young Child of the Prophet — as he seemed to swing in 
his cradle high up on the yellow minaret, and shouted with a voice 
like that of the Angel of Judgment, the invitation to evening 
prayer. As he swayed to and fro in that lofty nest, his face seemed 
lighted with a kind of ecstatic solemnity, as it shone in the rays 
of the declining day. 

It was the perfection of prayer and reverence. The setting 
sun, the long shadows, the faces to the East, the silence, the 
decorum, and the prophetic voice from the clouds. Alas ! I saw 
a grave father thumping the young prophet on the back when he 
descended ; and the young prophet winked with an expression : 
" Didn't I do it well ? " Alas ! for the Prophet ! Alas ! for Allah, 
Il-allah ! He was calling to a Yashmak down there in the street ! 

LXXI. 

On the other hand, I find the summit of reverence touched by 
two extremes in Catholicity — the Cistercian, sitting with folded 
hands before the oak-bound, brass-hefted Ordinal in the choir; 
and the little Irish children in our convent schools at prayer. 
The former is the culmination of religious dignity and reverence; 
the latter, of Christian simplicity and reverence. And it would be 
difficult to say which of the two is more pleasing in Heaven's 
sight. But, whether the heavy doors of the Kingdom would 
swing open more lightly under the strong and vigorous push of 
the Trappist, or the light, soft, timid touch of the child, one thing 
is certain, that the Angels might claim kinship with either in that 
supreme matter of reverence. And I suppose this is the reason 
why, in the two most pathetic instances narrated in Holy Writ, 
where the vengeance of God had to be averted from His people, 
the priests of the Lord stood weeping in the one case between the 

5 Hajar-el-aswud. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 55 

people and the altar ; and in the other, the prostrate figures of 
little children strewed the sanctuary before the face of the Most 
High. 

LXXII. 

Once upon a time, in the great city of Cairo, when the mar- 
kets were full of busy merchants, and the narrow streets were 
loaded with merchandise, a Dervish came in from the desert; and 
looking meekly around for a vacant space in the crowded mart, he 
laid down his square of carpet, and knelt and prayed. He then 
unfolded his garments, and placed on the carpet a tiny box, but 
it contained a pearl of great price. The passers-by laughed at 
the poverty of his belongings, and the great merchants, who sold 
spices and silks and unguents, turned around from time to time,, 
and jeered at the Dervish and his little paper box. No one came 
to buy, nor ask his price ; and he remained all day, his head 
silently bent in prayer. His thoughts were with Allah ! Late in 
the evening, as the asses of the rich merchants passed by, laden 
with costly goods, they came and sniffed at the little box that 
held the rich pearl. Then lifting their heads in the air, they 
brayed loudly : "It is not hay ! It is not hay! " And some grew 
angry, and cried still louder : " Give us hay ! It is not hay ! " Now 
the holy man said not a word. But when the sun had set, and 
nearly all had departed, he took up his box, and hid it away in 
the folds of his garments, and kneeling, he prayed. Then he 
gathered up his square of carpet, and passed out into the desert, 
saying in his heart : Blessed be Allah, Il-allah ! And afar on the 
night-winds he heard the bray of the market-asses : " It is not 
hay ! It is not hay ! Give us hay ! " 

LXXIII. 

This is the chief excellence and attraction of philosophy. It is 
an inexact science. One is always seeking the insoluble — going 
out into unknown regions after the Inexplicable and Undefined. 
Other sciences hand over to you their coins stamped and minted 
with the face or sigil of their kings ; philosophy is not a minted 
com, but an inexhaustible mine of all precious thoughts and sub- 



$6 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

lime principles. It deals with abstractions ; and to the end of time 
it is the abstract that will enchain the powers of that eternal 
Inquisitor — the Human Mind. Hence the great philosophers 
stand head and shoulders over all others in the vast Acropolis of 
human knowledge. Warriors, and statesmen and orators, artists 
in words, or marble, or canvas, sit at the feet of the priests of 
Pallas; and draw thence their inspiration. Greece is Greece 
because of its philosophy. Nay, nay, some one says, Greece is 
Greece for its Homer and ^Eschylus, for Pheidias and Pericles, for 
Themistocles and Leonidas ! Yes, but where was the fountain- 
head of all this inspiration — poetical, patriotic, artistic ? Was it 
not in that philosophy, imported from India ; and which, personi- 
fying the best conceptions of the human mind in the form of 
deities and demigods, created for dramatist, sculptor and painter, 
the noble archetypes of their ideas and works ; and gave to her 
patriots the inspirement that in defending, or exalting their 
country, they earned the favor of the gods, and the guerdon of an 
immortality to be shared with them on Olympus or the Elysian 
fields. 

LXXIV. 

So Rome is barren of immortals, because Rome was the 
school-room of imported sophists, not the cradle or home of 
original thought. Rome had never a philosophy. The spirit of 
Greece hovered around her coasts wherever the subtle-minded 
children of Attica or Asiatic Greece found a temporary refuge; 
and the Roman spirit, accustomed to the direct and violent arbitra- 
ment of the sword or mace, never took kindly to the subleties of 
dialectics, or the nebular speculations of the aliens. They pos- 
sessed the earth ; and they did not want the sky. They held 
the realities of life ; and dispensed with the dreams. They solved 
riddles in their own way. But, as a consequence, whatever of art 
they possessed was imported ; their great temples were Grecian ; 
Corinthian columns supported their forums and palaces ; their 
greatest poem dealt with a Grecian hero ; and their greatest orator 
derived all his graces of diction and all the subtleties of his elo- 
quence from Grecian models, whose inspiration he never acknowl- 
edged, possibly because in the translation into his own speech it 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. $7 

was diluted into the thinnest of rhetoric and the most vapory in 
suggestion or reflection. 



LXXV. 

The Greek Fathers, too, unquestionably lord it over the Latins 
(always excepting St. Augustine, who, if not a Platonist, was 
decidedly Platonic), at least in two things — sublety of thought and 
sweetness of expression. Whether it was the genius of the lan- 
guage, which having served to embody the greatest poetry in the 
world, has now descended to become the handmaid of science, or 
the effect of climate or ethnical conditions, there is no doubt that 
the Greek Patristic writings are fuller of rhetorical grace, and sug- 
gestive elegances than the Latin. The latter perhaps gain some- 
what in strength and precision from this very absence of grace 
and beauty of expression. But one can well understand how the 
compilers of Anthologies or Excerpts would select the former as 
richer in thought and sweeter in expression, and therefore more 
representative of what the early Church might have been in system 
and spirit. So speculative truth was never alienated from practical 
wisdom. Both combined to form the theogony of the Eastern 
Church. And both, strange to say, rested on Plato and Aristotle 
combined. For, to quote an expression of Coleridge, in wonder 
(rq> OavjAd^eiv) says Aristotle, does philosophy begin; and in 
astonishment (ra> dafiftelv), says Plato, does all true philos- 
ophy finish. And it was in this union of theology and philosophy, 
indigenous to Greek thought, that the special excellence of the 
Greek Patristic writings consists. 



LXXVI. 

It is very doubtful if there be a single idea in modern philoso- 
phy that was not borrowed from the ancients. The atomic theory, 
the theory of monads, archetypal and ectypal ideas, Pantheism in 
its Protean forms — all were familiar to Pythagoreans and Eleatics, 
as they are to us. For all philosophy resolves itself into belief in 
one of three theories : — 



58 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

{a) Mind alone exists — Idealism — the Pantheism of 
Hegel and Schelling. 
^ (b) Matter alone exists— Materialism— the Pantheism 
of Spinoza. 

Dualism. < (c) Mind and Matter exist — Christian Theism. 

And, if we study the ancient schools, and at the same time accept 
St. Augustine's bold idea, that Christianity did exist, even though 
as a penumbra and faintly, before Christ, we shall find that human 
thought, instead of moving in a straight line towards the insoluble 
problem of existence, is really turning round and round in con- 
centric circles. 

LXXVII. 

Was not the fall of man known to Empedocles : 

rpfc /jLVpids (Spas airb fia/cdpcov akaXrjaOcu, 
and the absolute necessity for KaOdpfioi expiations; and was 
not the Trinity known to the Platonists : 

irepl Tpicjv ef evos viroo-ravrayv 
and 

To avrb v ON, 

Tbv BefJLiovpySv Aoyov, or Noi)*/, zeal 

TrjV TOV KOCTfJLOV ^tv^r)V. 

And if we have seen before that man's mind tends naturally to the 
One Supreme Being, or Cause, and One Supreme Law, so, too, 
the tremendous mystery of the Trinity, before which the Church 
veils her face with an O, Altitudo ! has haunted all philosophical 
thought from the beginning. But perhaps the most extraordinary 
manifestation is in the systems of two such cometary lights as 
Hegel and Schelling. Both of these philosophers seem to trace 
a trinity of action and interaction in all nature, working upwards 
from incipient consciousness to the great mystery, which, alas ! 
they leave in abeyance. We place these trinities of thought side 
by side, to show how fantastically the greatest minds can operate 
on theoretic assumptions; and also to show what strange 
dementia has passed into the history of what is called Philosophy. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 59 

Hegelian. 
The Idea. — Three elements : 
i.— In Itself. 

2. — In opposition to contrary idea. 
3. — In union with it. 
or 

1. — The Idea in itself. 
2. — Out of itself. 
3. — Into, or for itself. 

The Faculties : — 

1. — The Perception of the Senses. 

2. — The Understanding that divides perception. 

3. — The Reason that unites. 

The Sciences : — 
1 . — Logic. 

2. — The Philosophy of Nature. 
3. — The Philosophy of Mind. 

The Religions : — 

1. — The Oriental Religion. 
2. — The Greek Religion. 
3. — The Christian Religion. 

Union of Philosophy and Religion: — 

I . — In the Christian community at its beginning. 
2. — In the Organized Church. 
3. — In the State. 

Schelling. 
The Potencies : 

1. — (Potenz der Reflexion) Reflective Movement. 

2. — (Potenz der Subsumption) Subsumptive Movement. 

3. — (Potenz der Vernunft) Reasoning Movement. 

These potencies are exercised thus : 
On Matter : — 

1 . — Expansion. 

2. — Attraction. 

3. — Gravity. 



60 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

In Dynamics : 

i . — Magnetism. 
2. — Electricity. 
3. — Galvanism. 

On Organisms : — 

I . — Reproduction. 
2. — Irritability. 
3. — Sensibility. 

The same three potencies are exercised 
On Mi?id — In Knowledge : 

1 . — Sensation. 

2. — Reflection. 

3. — Freedom. 

In Action : 
1. — The Individual. 
2. — The State. 
3. — History. 

Finally the two philosophers agree on three great cardinal prin- 
ciples : 

1. — The identity of Thought and Being. 

2. — The identity of Contradictories. 

3. — The processus of things, making the human mind the 
ultimate term. 

No wonder that a French writer, after the study of these " weird 
speculations," should say : — 

" I must frankly confess that my first sentiment as I leave 
these strange speculations of modern Germany is one of astonish- 
ment, that in the country of Leibnitz they should have been able 
to enthrall men's minds so long." 

LXXVIII. 

But, with all that incongruity and utter unreasonableness, it is 
certain that what are called Hegelians of the Right would find their 
conclusions lead infallibly into the dogmatism of the Catholic 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 6l 

Church, just as the "identity of contradictories" seems to be 
found in the highest ethics of Christian faith ; and Schelling's 
Pantheism, crude and blasphemous, is but the truncated and un- 
developed form of Christian mysticism. So that all philosophy, 
after passing through the tortuous mazes of human speculative 
thought, emerges in the Gospel; just as the wildest theories of 
existence, and thought and being, terminate in the Eternal, Self- 
Existent Cause ! 



LXXIX. 

I was pulling up some withered asters to-day. A robin came 
over in a friendly way and looked on. I was grateful for the 
pretty companionship. It was familiar, and I hate stand-off and 
stuck-up people. I knew he admired my industry, if not my 
skill. He looked very pretty with his deep-brown back, and 
scarlet breast-plate, and his round wondering eyes watching mine. 
Alas, no ! he was watching something else. A rich, red, fat 
worm wriggled from the roots of the dead flowers. Robin 
instantly seized him, flung him down, bit him in halves, then in 
quarters ; then gobbled up each luscious and living morsel, and 
looked quite innocent and unconcerned after the feat. He had 
swallowed as much raw meat as a grown man who would dine 
off three or four pounds of beafsteak ; and he was his own butcher. 
And this is the wretch that poets rave about ! 



LXXX. 

But hark ! that ripple, that cascade of silver sound, as if from 
the throat of an angel ! Not the shrill continuous anthem of the 
lark, as he shivers with the tremulous raptures of all the music in 
him; nor the deep bell-tones of the blackbird, as on a May 
morning he makes all the young forest leaves vibrate with the 
strong, swift waves of his melody ; but a little peal of silver bells 
on a frosty morning. Who is it ? What is it ? An Oread from 
the mountains, who has lost her way hither ; or a Hamadryad from 
yonder forest who is drawing out her wet tresses after her revel in 



62 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

the silver cascade! No, but that butcher, that cannibal — that 
glutton ! I'll begin soon to believe that prima-donnas drink ; and 
that poets eat like mortals. 

LXXXI. 

No, no ! In spite of this horrible disillusion I will not, I cannot 
believe that Keats, Keats of the " Hyperion," Keats of " The Ode 
to the Nightingale," Keats of the immortal sonnet, did actually 
and verily get drunk for six weeks together. Can you even con- 
jecture it, that the Greek dreamer who saw such wonders in the 
Grecian urn, and who looked through the 

Magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn, 

did actually scorch his palate with cayenne pepper in order to 
enjoy all the more the cool deliciousness of claret? And yet it is 
not incredible. His letters about Fanny Browne, and to her, re- 
veal a strong sensuous soul, a fitting counterpart to his Charonian, 
— a Roman, not a Greek, — epicurean, Pagan, unrestrained, incon- 
tinent ; and all in the frailest body that was ever hung together by 
the subtlest threads of an immortal spirit. There, my robin has 
flown with his worm ! 



LXXXII. 

And " mad Shelley ! " The first of English lyrists. Nay, nay, 
I cannot retract, if it is a literary heresy a hundred times over. I 
place him high up there on the shelf, side by side, nay, even 
above Shakespeare. " There is a good deal of lying about 
Shakespeare," says a certain distinguished American. So there 
is ! Goethe commenced it in that very silly and salacious book, 
" Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship." Some day men will assure 
themselves on irreparable evidence that Francis Bacon and 
William Shakespeare were one and the same person ; and that 
Francis Bacon was not a great philosopher, nor an original thinker 
(that is conceded already); and that William Shakespeare, the 
greatest of dramatists, is not the greatest of poets. The great in- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 6$ 

terpreter of the human ; the poorest interpreter of the divine, was 
Shakespeare. But Shelley! Like his own skylark, he never 
leaves the skies. At least he never sings on earth. He is a 
denizen of the empyrean. He lives in clouds and lightning, and 
walks on their upper floors. He has his feet on the shoulders of 
the winds, and is the pilgrim of darkness and solitude. He has 
not thought one weak thought, nor written one dull line. His 
soul is "girt by the deserts of the universe"; and he seems to 
ascend, in the flesh, to the soul of some planet, that 

" Swings silent in unascended majesty." 

He is the poet of high thought, the prophet of abstractions, 
the magician, who impersonates on canvas the impersonal and 
abstract ; and fills his pages and the universe with all kinds of 
spiritual and transcendent creations. And yet, there is his 
apology for free love and atheism ; and there is that hideous 
blasphemy, which should make every line he wrote worthy to be 
burnt by a public hangman, and their incinerated relics cast into 
the common sewer ; and yes ! there is the body of Harriet West- 
brook dragged from the slime of the Serpentine, and he with 
Mary Godwin and Claire Clairmont over there in the Capri of 
the Villa d'Allegri. Alas ! there is the robin and the worm again ! 

LXXXIII. 

Nevertheless, turn away your imagination for a moment from 
the " mad Shelley" of Eton and "Queen Mab " ; of Harriet 
Westbrook and Claire Clairmont; and try and see only the 
Shelley who took the epileptic woman in his arms to the friend's 
house ; the Shelley who never touched meat nor wine ; who lay 
for hours with his head near the blazing fire, or on the burning 
roofs of Pisa ; who chased the flying Allegra through the convent 
cloisters, and saw her rising from the sea ; who gave away every 
fraction of money he possessed ; who went down to his sea-death, 
and seemed to his friends to hover above the furnace or crematory 
on the Italian sands ; then recall the music as of Ariel in his in- 
comparable lyrics ; the choral anthems in his great dramas ; his 
odes to the Skylark and the West Wind, and you reluctantly de- 
clare that he was the eVo-a^evo? Trvpurvp, if ever there was one. 



64 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Well, well, how easy it is to forget the mangled worm in the 
song and plumage of the bird ! 



LXXXIV. 

Is there an explanation of this most singular blending in one 
soul of such ethereal purity and such infernal and sordid malig- 
nity ? How did the mind that followed the skylark into the 
immaculate recesses of clouds and sunsets, fling up the volcanic 
and destructive scoriae of the Revolt of Islam and Queen Mab? 
He tells us in his pathetic letters to his alarmed publishers : " I 
write for the avverot ! You might as well go to a ginshop for a 
leg of mutton as expect anything human or earthly from me." 
And then : "I do not think that twenty will read my ' Prome- 
theus !' " What gave such a spirit this bias towards anarchy 
and every kind of moral and social and spiritual lawlessness ? 
One can conceive Shelley, trained otherwise, becoming the poet 
of all sweet and elevated and aspiring souls. Alas ! now we 
have to anthologize him carefully ; and look closely between the 
purple and golden leaves of the culled and fragrant flowers to see 
that no deadly, though beautiful, serpent lies coiled there. His is 
the too common and terrible creation — a fair spirit in a woman's 
form, trailing away into the scaly coils of a snake ! 



LXXXV. 

Some fine people, or, at least some people who affect fine 
tastes, despise the dahlia. Not so I. It is a faithful hardy 
servitor, remaining with us, through the universal abandonment, 
to the last. Long ago the geraniums have disappeared in cut- 
tings ; the red and yellow bells of the begonias have strewn the 
brown beds ; the chrysanthemums with their fragile, cut-paper 
leaves, are hiding away in the greenhouse. The dahlia, quite 
independent of autumnal winds, hangs its rich carmine and purple 
head, full of oval chalices ; or flaunts its great star-disks of 
scarlet flowers in the rich wilderness of leaves. And down comes 
leaf after leaf into its wintry grave, sometimes falling gently as 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 65 

a consumptive patient passes away ; sometimes blown to death 
by the : 

" Wild West Wind, the breath of Autumn's being." 

Yes, indeed ! my horizon is belted rather closer and nearer 
than I like by the mighty foliage of woods and plantations. This 
cuts away all view of the blue mountains I should like to see. 
And in the deep sleep of summer peace, it is rather choking in its 
profusion and proximity. Nevertheless, it has its advantages — 
not the least, that it faces, like a strong phalanx, the swift march 
of the West Wind ; and out of the collision and the struggle 
come sounds of battle that are inspiring, the clash of host upon 
host, the shout of the advancing battalions, the defiance of the 
resisting legions. But down they fall in myriads, the slain of the 
autumnal fight ; and the forests will be stripped naked and sub- 
dued ; and the winter storms with all their ferocity will sweep 
soundless through the naked and quivering branches. But that 
wild West Wind, rainless and deepening the shadows of the 
already closing night, — how it suggests spirits and the dead who 
live ! At least these sombre October evenings I become almost 
painfully aware of the immediate presence of the dead. Strange 
I never feel the proximity of father or mother ; but my sisters — 
one in particular, the only dark-haired in the family — has haunted 
me through life. I no more doubt of her presence and her light 
touch on the issues of my life than I doubt of the breath of the 
wind that flutters the tassel of my biretta in my hand. Yet what 
is strange is not her nearness, but her farness. I should not be 
in the least surprised if I saw her face shining swiftly from the 
darkness, or saw her form outlined against the twilight sky. 
But why I cannot speak to her, or touch her, there is the problem 
and the vexation. 

LXXXVI. 

And yet, when one comes to think of it, it is seen that such a 
revelation would destroy all the zest of life by solving too easily 
the ever-interesting enigma. God's wiser ways demand our faith, 
were it only for our own sake. If all were revealed, all would be 
commonplace. It is better to believe and hope than to see. If that 



66 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

sister's face did flash suddenly out of the unknown and become 
so real that I could recognize its spiritual features, would it 
increase my faith or better my life ? Alas, no ! After the shock 
of surprise, I might treat it as a delusion of sense. Wisely has the 
Evangelist put his finger on the lips of Lazarus. If we had been 
told what he experienced in eternity — would the world believe ? 
No ; the world would laugh and go its way. 

LXXXVII. 

So, too, with that mercy from on high that veils our future in 
impenetrable mists. Physical science has done a great deal ; the 
occult sciences are now moving forward to take their place. The 
weather can be forecast. Meteorologists can wire from place to 
place the depression that foretells a hurricane. But no man can 
tell me what will occur to me within an hour, a day, a year. And 
would I seek to know it, if the possibility of such a revelation were 
at my disposal ? No ! I would drag the veil faster down on the 
arcana of the future, and walk forward boldly, holding the hand 
of God. I will not tempt the future, for I see what a miserable 
life would have been mine, could I have foreseen the vicissitudes 
of the past. Nor will I fret, or be anxious about what may never 
be. The worst evils are those which never occur. And where 
would be our faith in Providence — the Far-seer — if our weak eyes 
could penetrate the dusk of the way we shall yet have to walk ? 

LXXXVIII. 

My flowers have lingered patiently all along the dull autumn 
days, keeping their colors bright under the gray skies and sombre 
surroundings. The gladioli put out of their sheaths their superb 
blossoms, like convoluted vases of the richest Venetian glass ; the 
asters held up their faces to their sister stars ; the great rich 
dahlias filled their purple honeycombs with rain and dew ; but all 
seemed anxious to adorn the mother earth from which they 
sprang, and loth to leave the soft autumnal air, and the sweet 
caresses of wind and soft, pure rain. Last night, however, came a 
frost, a bitter frost, and all now is wilted and withered unto death. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 67 

Nothing has escaped. The leaves are black in their decay ; the 
flowers hang their stricken heads. All is over. The pomp of 
summer and the glory of autumn are at an end. The hortus con- 
clusus is now a hortus siccus, until the time of the snow-drop and 
the crocus comes again ! 

LXXXIX. 

This year has died, like a lusty old man who drops off sud- 
denly, retaining his vigor to the last, and putting off decay to the 
silent metamorphosis of the tomb. The trees had refused to 
change color until the final days of October ; but then with a sud- 
denness which made the change more vivid, they put on all the 
varied colors of smouldering fires, carmine and umber and ochre. 
It was not the burial, but the cremation of Nature. It was in- 
tensely beautiful ; and there was a look of silent patience in these 
smouldering forests, that made their dissolution intensely pathetic. 
And low skies, barred with deep gray banks of clouds, between 
whose parallel ridges not the sun, but a dim sunlight shone, leaned 
down over the dying landscape, until evening, when the gray 
melancholy lifted a little, only to show the greater sadness of 
death, lighted by that lingering sunset. Then, one day, a fierce 
autumnal hurricane sped out of the red regions of the west; and 
at night, the mise-en-scene of Nature was over; all the purple 
trappings with which she had clothed herself for her final val- 
ediction and stage-farewell, were flung aside ; and there remained 
only the skeleton framework of stage and wings, where she had 
acted so pompous and so picturesque a part. 

XC. 

To-day a child in its mother's arms came into my garden. I 
looked at it, and saw at the same time the necessity of the In- 
carnation. God could not resist taking that loveliest form — the 
highest to which material things have reached. The yellow 
curls, thick and close and fine as silk floss, falling down upon his 
neck; the clear, limpid eyes, beaming with pure delight; the 
white teeth, and its ineffable joy, as it played at hide-and-seek 



68 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

behind its mother's neck ; and then becoming suddenly serious, 
stroked his mother's cheek, and stared at her with eyes of 
wonder — no ! If God has chosen to unite Himself to His crea- 
tion, He could not have chosen a lowlier, nor a lovelier form. 
How beautifully these mediaeval painters interpreted this mystery 
of the Human and Divine ! And with what theological exactitude, 
yet with what artistic and withal sympathetic instincts they drew 
from the deep wells of imagination and devotion their Madonna 
and Child. Was it Tennyson that found fault with the serious 
look in the Child's eyes in that eighth wonder of the world — the 
Sistine Madonna? Look more closely, O poet, and you will 
find that Raffaelle was right. 

XCI. 

I cannot agree with the theologians who say that God united 
Himself to man as His highest rational creature. Man is the 
lowest in the scale of rational beings. You cannot conceive lower 
without drifting into the regions of monsters. It was because 
man was the lowest reason in the scale of creation that God chose 
to join extremes — to knit Himself, the highest link with the lowest. 
" He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave." 

XCII. 

But mark the swift and sudden transformation of the creature ! 
" Remember that thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt 
return ! " What a gulf between the ruthless sentence and this — 
" Know you not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy 
Ghost ? " What wrought the change in the inspired pages ? 

The Incarnation ! 

XCIII. 

I never could understand that mediaeval idea of the worth- 
lessness and contemptibility of the body. It was easy to under- 
stand it under the Old Law, or by the light of reason alone. But, 
by the light of Revelation, and in view of the stupendous fact 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 69 

that God chose it as the dwelling-place of His Son on earth, and 
His eternal, if glorified and transcendent Tabernacle in Heaven, it 
seems almost a denial of that ineffable mystery to speak of the 
body as a " sewer of filth," " a tabernacle of corruption," etc. 
Viewed in itself it is true that its marvellous and miraculous con- 
struction — the adaptability of each organ to its wants, the subtle 
and complex mechanism, awake enthusiasm in the scientist. The 
eye alone is a concentrated omniscience, so small in compass, so 
vast in comprehensiveness and power. But all is mortal and frail. 
It is but the solidifying of a few gases, that are dissolved in the 
putrefaction of death. What then ? Science says it is a miracle, 
an eternal and inexhaustible wonder. But science also says it is 
but a passing whim of restless, constructive Nature — a delusion, a 
dream, a vapor, a myth. The ancient Scriptures seem to declare 
the same, but hark ! here is a new Revelation, that apotheosizes 
this figment of clay, and clothes corruption with incorruption. 
What is the key of the new dogma ? Et Verbum Caro factum est! 




PART II 

WINTER 



(70 



WINTER 



I. 



I notice these early evenings of winter a curious light in my 
garden ; and across the river there is a faint twilight amongst the 
trees, so faint it is like the shadow of moonlight, or a terrestrial 
reflection of the Milky Way. I have read in some old book that 
it is the phosphorescence of decay. Everyone has seen the strange, 
pale light that accompanies the effluvia from decayed fish ; and 
the beautiful phosphor-tinted waves which mariners gaze at, and 
poets rave about, in the incandescent tropical seas, are but the 
clean ocean waters heaving restlessly under a horrible burden of 
decomposition. This is realism with a vengeance ! And, as I am 
a sworn foe to realism, and refuse to see aught but what I can 
idealize, I behold in the pale blue light that hangs above the dead 
forest-leaves, or the unctuous meteors from the leprous scum of 
the ocean, some idea of a soul, some promise of immortality. It 
is the poet's soul of nature, framed from primeval fires and revert- 
ing, under paler conditions, to its original state ; and taking with it, 
out of the decaying matter which once it vivified, the one element 
that ensures its own immortality. 



II. 

Death — the great mystery ! You remember how Tolstoi forces 
it on Levin's vision in that dread Anna Karenina. It is so inevi- 
table, so repulsive, that one yearns to find in it some hidden charm, 
some mercy, that will show even beneath its hideous features the 
eternal and unchangeable beauty, that is, the goodness of God. 
And now it is all around. Nature is dead. Bare trees, grassless 
fields, empty gardens, flowerless beds, gloomy skies, sunless days 
— ay, all is dead, dead ! And, as you trample under foot, these 
wet days in the early winter, great, soft masses of red leaves, 
rotting chestnuts, fallen acorns ; and think of all the glories and 
generous promise of Spring, and all the luxuriant splendor of 

(73) 



74 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Autumn, the question involuntarily arises : Ut quid perditio haec ? 
Wherefore this waste? Why all this prodigality of Nature for 
nothing ? Where is the law of parsimony : Entia non sunt multi- 
plicanda sine necessitate! Until you lift your eyes on high and see 
that this, too, is a law of nature. Wherefore the eternal destruc- 
tion and evolution of nature — the construction and destruction of 
suns and planets ? Wherefore the waste of light in the universe, if 
only an infinitesimal portion of our sun's light reaches his planets ? 
And sound ? And the never-ending vibrations of electricity ? Is 
all this lost, and " cast as rubbish to the void " ? It cannot be. 
There is some explanation of the mystery. 

III. 

Ay, says the scientist, so there is. There is nothing lost, or 
mislaid in the universe. Matter is indestructible; so is force 
eternal ! The perpetual interplay goes on, without haste, without 
rest — the never-ceasing weaving in the looms of Time of the 
garments of the Eternal ! How do the verses go ? 

In the currents of life, in the tempests of motion, 
In the fervor of act, in the fire, in the storm, 

Hither and thither, 

Over and under 

Wend I and wander. 

Birth and the grave, 

Limitless ocean, 

Where the restless wave 

Undulates ever 

Under and over. 

Their seething strife, 

Heaving and weaving 

The changes of life. 
At the whirling loom of Time unawed 
I work the living mantle of God. 

Ay, but that mantle is woven out of mists and shadows, out of 
clouds and rain, as well as out of suns and lightnings ; and it is 
studded and hung around with humble bells and pomegranates, as 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 75 

well as with the pearls of stars, or the fleeces of comets. And 
nothing is too mean to be rejected as contributory to the whole 
fabric and tissue of beauty. The widow's mite was acceptable in 
the temple ; the grass grows greenest above the grave. There is 
a beauty in decay ; there is a kind of glory in destruction, as of 
honor in creation. There is nothing lost. All is fair and beauti- 
ful in the end. Only, there must be an object — otherwise all is 
waste power, as of a gristless mill that grinds itself away. And 
that object clearly is the garment of the Eternal, the sacerdotal 
vestments in which God is ever arrayed for the sacrifice that is 
never consummated. 

IV. 

And, as in matter, so too in mind. In its eternal reproduction 
nothing is lost. It is impossible not to sympathize with what the 
world calls its failures. For every failure has in it the germ of a 
great success. Shakespere was unknown for one hundred and 
fifty years after his death. And many a titled booby whose horse 
he held outside that London theatre probably despised him as a 
potboy, and flung him a pourboire with contempt. Shelly was 
defunct for fifty years after his death ; and Wordsworth for fifty 
years during his life. Dante lay dead for centuries : then he rose 
to immortality. All the celebrities of these centuries, contempo- 
raries of these immortals, and overshadowing them with their 
borrowed splendors, have long ago passed out unto the unknown. 
The failures have risen up to perfect and permanent success. So, 
too, even now. The great men of our age are unknown. They 
will be heard of in a century or two perhaps. A fashionable 
beauty at a watering-place will attract more attention than the 
young girl who has just won her gold medal in Greek or Science. 
Any skilful golfist is of more account than the Senior Wrangler. 
The loud-voiced, many-gestured demagogue occupies more space 
in public attention, and in the public press, than the silent student, 
who at midnight is building up great fabrics of thought for the 
future, or discovering some subtle solution for the political enig- 
mata of the present. But in a different sense from that intended 
by the poet : 

The One remains, the Many change and pass. 



76 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Thought is permanent ; words evaporate. You cannot kill ideas, 
nor imprison them. Nay, you cannot oppose them, or contradict 
them, if they are built on the foundations of unalterable truth. 
And as the most forlorn and rejected things are taken up and 
woven in Nature's laboratory into all beautiful and glowing forms, 
so the silent thoughts of the unknown are woven into action by 
those who never heard the author's name, but who have been 
thrilled into doing under the spell of a voiceless inspiration. 



V. 

Hence, too, it would seem that the pen is greater than the 
voice. It lasts longer and reaches further. The litterateur is a 
greater power than the politician. He inspires the latter; and 
outlasts him. Rousseau precipitated the French Revolution ; 
and survived it. He created Marat and Robespierre ; they did 
not extinguish him. He will live when they are forgotten. So 
much the worse ; but we are only noticing facts. Of the two 
great men who held the mind of England for the last half of the 
nineteenth century, the literary man will outlive the statesman. 
Newman will be an active and perennial force when Gladstone is 
but a name. The one left behind him thoughts ; the other deeds. 
But thoughts are longer lived than deeds. So, too, moral teach- 
ing lasts longer than pure intellectualism, and is far more fertile 
of good. Supreme intelligence does not win humanity. There 
never was such a silly comparison, even in the chaotic writings of 
unbelievers, than that which was instituted between Socrates and 
Christ — the one, a hard, cold, reasoning sophist ; the other, the 
incarnation of tenderness and love. We soon get tired of that 
infinite wrapping and unwrapping of words in the dialogues of the 
former. We never weary of the tender pathos of the latter. 
Compare the Banquet where Socrates drank all the young men 
under the table, and went out to argue in his barren, disputative 
way in the streets; and the Last Supper, where Christ gave 
Himself to His Disciples ; and, having sung a hymn, went forth 
to His Agony ! Contrast the hard, mechanic, pettifogging ques- 
tion : Didst thou not say, Crito ? with the " soft wailings of 
infinite pity " — " Filioli mei " ; " Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 77 

would I have gathered thy children " ; " Our friend, Lazarus, 
sleepeth"; "Little children, love one another"; "Simon Peter, 
lovest thou me ? " " Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani ? " 



VI. 

Timanthes, unable to express the grief of Agamemnon at 
the death of Iphigenia, painted the father with head covered and 
face enveiled. And the sun, unable to bear the horror of the 
death of Nature, veils his face from us these short days of winter. 
Ay, indeed, they are dark days ! Just a kind of mournful twilight 
between the night and the night. And what is worse, it is a 
weeping twilight. We have no cold until January and February ; 
but drip ! drip ! drip ! comes the rain all day long, flooding rivers, 
filling swamps, creating lakelets everywhere ; and all night long 
it is the same soft swish of rain, rain, rain upon the roof, flooding 
the shoots beneath the eaves, dripping from the bare trees ; and 
you can hear the channels running flooded to the river, and see the 
swollen river sweeping noiselessly to the sea. Oh, but it is dreary, 
dreary, like the moated grange, and the " rusted nail, that held the 
pear to the garden wall." Yet these days, too, have their enjoyments. 
I confess I like a real, downright wet day. Not one that is rainy 
by fits and starts, so that you must go out, and get muddy boots 
and dripping mackintosh ; but a day when the conduits of the 
sky are turned on fully, and the great sheets come down steadily, 
steadily, or beat in fitful gusts against your windows, and wash 
them clean ; and the most hopeful weather-prophet, scanning 
every quarter of the sky, cannot see the faintest break of white 
cloud to warrant him in presaging that, sooner or later, it will 
clear. We have plenty of these " cataract " days in Ireland ; and 
they are simply delightful ! 

VII. 

Delightful ? Yes, to be sure. And first, you have the intense 
joy of unbroken solitude. You are alone — absolutely alone for 
a whole day ! The knocker is muffled ; the bell is silent. No 
foolish people who want to waste an hour on you, will venture 



78 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

forth to-day. Those who have real business to transact, will 
defer it. Then your conscience is at rest. If you do stir up the 
fragrant wood-fire, and watch the merry blazes dance up the deep 
chimney, and wheel over your armchair, and take up your latest 
purchase, crisp and clean from the publisher, or musty and 
stained from the second-hand " catalogue," there are no qualms 
about luxurious idleness ; no thought of that country-school to 
be visited, or that horrid scandal to be unearthed, or that grimy 
lane to be patrolled. You cannot go out — that is all about it ! There, 
listen ! Swish go the cataracts ; patter, patter go the bullets of rain 
on your windows ! The whole landscape is blotted out in a mist 
of smoke ; gray sheets of water are steered across the fields and 
trees by the jealous wind ; little jets of brown liquid are thrown 
up from the puddles in the streets where the rain-drops strike 
them. The channels are choked with the eager running of the 
streamlets from the streets ; the brown river sweeps majestically 
along. There is no use in trying. You cannot go out. Wheel 
your chair closer ; watch for a moment, for the greater enjoy- 
ment, the desolation and death without. Then glance at the 
ruddy flame ; and, finally, bury yourself deep, deep in your book. 
No fear of interruption ; one, two, three hours pass by in that 
glorious interchange of ideas. Life has nothing better to offer 
you. Enjoy it while you may ! 



VIII. 

How you would hate the miserable optimist, who, intruding 
on such sacred seclusion, would say with a knowing look : " 'Tis 
clearing away in the west ! There is a break down there behind 
the trees ! we'll have a fine afternoon ! " Imagine, a sickly, pallid 
winter sun looking down on such a wet, bedraggled landscape; 
and, in unholy alliance with your conscience, ordering you away 
from that cheerful, neighborly fire ! And how you would bless 
the cheerful croaker, who, looking north, south, east, and west, 
would shake his head sadly, and say : " No stirring abroad to- 
day ! You wouldn't drive a dog from your door in such weather! 
We shall have forty-eight hours' continuous rain ! " Forty-eight 
hours ! Think of it ! Think of it ! How we will poke in long- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 79 

forgotten drawers, and look up old accounts, and see how 
extravagant we were in our heyday, and examine old diaries, and 
re-read century-old letters. There, you took them up by chance, 
and now, entranced, you sit on the edge of a chair, or on an open 
trunk, and read, read, till your eyes grow dim with fatigue, or — 
tears. Ah ! indeed, the letter, frayed and yellow, is almost falling 
to pieces in your hands. You hold it together with an effort. 
Letter by letter, the old familiar handwriting begins to dawn on 
you, and you read. It is all " dear," or " dearest," and " Surely 
you must have known that I never intended to hurt," and "Are 
you not over-sensitive, dear, and too prone to take offence ? " and 
" Come over informally this evening, and let us forget." You 
poise the letter in your fingers and try to remember. Yes ! you 
wrote a dignified and very cutting letter in reply ; and a great 
sea evermore rolled between you and the friend, whose face these 
many years has been upturned to the stars. Or it is a letter from 
a child at school, largely printed and ill-spelled, asking you for a 
little favor. You refused it, as a duty, of course, as if there were 
any duty to one another in this world but love. Or, it is from a 
poor friend, who has gone down in the struggle, and is in sore 
distress, and begs " for auld lang syne " to help him. You 
could have spared that twenty or fifty dollars easily ; but you 
were prudent. You argued : He is extravagant ; 'tis his own 
fault. It will be a lesson to refuse him. Alas ! you wouldn't 
have liked to see his face as he read your letter. He has long since 
sunk beneath the current; and his children are begging their 
bread. Well, fold it up, but don't burn it. It is a voice from 
the grave. 

IX. 

I do not think there is any circumstance in the even life of 
Immanuel Kant, that is more painful to his admirers than his cold 
refusal of a few ducats to poor Fichte, to help the latter back to 
his native province. And I think there is hardly on record a more 
touching and dignified letter than this appeal of Fichte's, wrung 
from him only by the direst distress. " By a residence in my na- 
tive province, I could most easily obtain, as a village pastor, the 
perfect literary quiet which I desire until my faculties are matured. 



80 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

My best course thus seems to be to return home ; — but I am 
deprived of the means ; I have only two ducats, and even these 
are not my own, for I have yet to pay for my lodgings. There 
appears then to be no rescue for me from this situation, unless I 
can find some one who, in reliance on my honor, will advance me 
the necessary sum for the expenses of my journey, until the time 
when I can calculate with certainty on being able to make repay- 
ment. I know no one to whom I could offer this security without fear 
of being laughed at to my face, except you. ... I am so con- 
vinced of a certain sacrifice of honor in thus placing it in pledge, 
that the very necessity of giving you this assurance seems to 
deprive me of a part of it myself; and the deep shame which thus 
falls upon me is the reason why I cannot make an application of 
this kind verbally, for I must have no witness of that shame. 
My honor seems to me really doubtful until that engagement is 
fulfilled, because it is always possible for the other party to sup- 
pose that I may never fulfil it." 

He never added, poor fellow, that in the background, behind 
the imagined vicarage, was the form of his betrothed, Johanna 
Rahn, who was only waiting for these reluctant ducats to become 
the faithful wife that she proved herself to be in all the after- 
years. 

X. 

Now it is quite certain that no one can read that letter without 
sharing the sense of shame, that must have suffused the face of 
the writer, and tingled in his fingers as he wrote it. And no one 
can read of Kant's refusal — gentleman, scholar, and philosopher, 
as he was — without feeling equal shame. And yet how different 
are the sentiments. The one is the shame of great pity ; the other, 
the shame of disappointment. We are sorry for Fichte, because 
he is reduced to so pitiable a condition even of honorable mendi- 
cancy ; we are sorry for Kant, because of his " lost opportuni- 
ties." But we would retain for ever the letter of the former, as a 
relic of honorable shame ; we would gladly forget the refusal of 
the latter, as a stain on a great reputation. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. Si 

XI. 

Ah me ! those accounts — Dr. and Cr. and L.S.D. ! What 
desperate plungers and wastrels we all were in our heyday ! What 
a stoical contempt we had for money ! That picture which we 
fancied, and which the dealer assured us was a real Van Dyck ; 
that vast encyclopedia ; twelve guineas for that Tissot's Life of 
Christ, which we instantly gave away, because of its horrid French 
realism ; that summer vacation — how that hotel bill did mount 
up ! We shake our heads mournfully over ourselves — ourselves, 
mind, of the past, not ourselves of the present — there we are 
always devout idolaters ! But those items — Charity 2s. 6d.; char- 
ity 5s.; charity 15s.; charity 20s.; are these, too, regrettable?' 
Happily, no ! We cast our bread upon the running waters ; and,, 
after many days, it was returned. 

XII. 

And these diaries ! Dear me ! How brief your life's history ! 
Into how small a space have you concentrated the thoughts, ideas, 
desires, emotions, passions, that swayed you for so many years ! 
That day, so full of hope, or shame, or sorrow, or ambition, or 
anxiety — how swiftly you have dismissed it in one line ! You 
remember you thought it would never end. You thought that sus- 
pense intolerable, that affront unbearable, that injury irreparable. 
You took a despondent view of life, a despairful view of men. 
You said in your anger: Omnis homo mendax ! How little it all 
looks now. What a speck in the vistas of years ! How childish 
now seem your anger, your impatience, your fretfulness ! How 
keenly you realize that the worst evils are those which never 
occur ! You worked yourself into a fever of passion over possi- 
bilities. You saw ahead but rapids, and shallows, and rocks. Lo ! 
your life has glided smoothly over all ; and you smile at the perils 
that encompassed you. And that bitter disappointment — that 
misunderstanding which threatened such dire ruin to your pros- 
pects, lo ! it has gone by harmlessly ; and you are ashamed of 
your vindictiveness and hate and childish apprehensions. The 
great wave that came on threatening to engulf you, you have 



82 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

buoyantly surmounted ; and you are out on the great high seas, 
whilst it has passed onward, and broken harmlessly on the shore. 

We look before and after, and pine for what is not. Foolish 
enough ! Live in the present ; and pull down a thick veil over 
the future, leaving it in God's hands. Live, live, in the present, 
sucking out of the hours of life all the honey they will yield. 

Mors aurem vellens, " ViviteT ait, " Venio" 



XIII. 

But there is a somewhat different lesson to be gathered from 
these same old, frayed, and yellow records of the past. I have 
purposely omitted the first line of the quotation, which runs thus : 

Pone merum talosque ; pereant qui crastina curant ; 
Mors aurem vellens, " Vivite," ait, "Venio." 

I rather like that picture of grim Death, flicking the ear of his vic- 
tim, and whispering: "Make the most of it, old fellow, I'm 
coming for you soon." But the " pone merum talosque " sounds 
very like old Omar ; and after all, this voluptuous life won't do. 
All men are agreed upon that, except that most miserable class 
of men of whom perhaps Des Esseintes in Huysman's novel is a 
type ; and who closes his worthless, pleasure-seeking life by a fate 
that seems sufficient retribution : Sur le chemin, degrise y seul, 
abominablement lasse. Neither will it do to seek that milder 
Epicurean paradise in which without labor, or suffering, and 
merely by mental training and mind-abstraction, there is perfect 
and profound peace. I do not say that men should not practise 
mind discipline so perfectly that they can shake off easily the 
minor worries of life. This is very desirable. Nay, it should be 
a part of all education, to teach that the will is paramount, that 
the minor faculties must obey it, and that a memory that loves to 
go back upon remorse, or an imagination that is prone to dwell 
on a perilous future, must be curbed by the superior power, and 
learn to abide in the present. But this is a long distance away 
from the religious peace connoted by the famous lines of St. 
Teresa : 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 83 

Nada te turbe ! Let nothing trouble thee ! 

Nada te espante ! Let nothing frighten thee ! 

Todo se passa. All things pass away. 

Dios no se muda ! God alone is immutable ! 

La pacienza Patience obtains everything. 
Todo lo alcanza. 

Nada te falta : He who possesses God wants nothing : 

Solo Dios basta ! God alone suffices. 



XIV. 

Philosophy has aimed at the former. Religion has secured 
the latter. That perfect peace — the Nirvana of the Asiatics — has 
never been attained by mortal ; cannot indeed be obtained until 
after the soul has migrated from being to being, and has become 
so attenuated that it has lost self-consciousness. To attempt this 
in ordinary life is to fail. It seems easy to say : Abstract your 
mind from all earthly things ; let men be as shadows beneath 
you ; live in the higher atmosphere of thought, and dwell alone 
with your own soul ; let neither love, nor vanity, nor ambition, 
nor any earthly desire have place in your heart : and you will 
know what is meant by perfect peace. Alas ! we have struck our 
roots too deeply into the earth to root them thus up remorse- 
lessly without pain : and the more we seek such peace the farther 
will it fly from us. What then? Is there something better? 
Something higher ? No ! there is nothing higher than perfect 
peace ; but it must be peace through holiness. In other words, 
there is no use in abstracting ourselves from earth, if we cling to 
self. After all, it is self that torments us ; and if we could wean 
ourselves from all things else, so long as self remains, there is 
no perfect peace. 

XV. 

I was rather struck with this thought on reading Hutton's 
monograph on Cardinal Newman. It is not very interesting read- 
ing, because it is too philosophical, in the sense that it is too syn- 
thetic. We all like analysis of character — the drawing asunder 
and unravelling of the various threads that make up human life. 



84 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

But when an author begins to draw big conclusions on things in 
general from these threads, it is apt to weary. But, it is whole- 
some to learn that the great Cardinal did, in early life, grasp 
the principle that " Holiness is better than peace ! " It seems 
a paradox, under one aspect, because we generally understand 
that peace is the concomitant, or result, of holiness. But the 
meaning clearly is that the soul that seeks peace without holiness 
will never find it ; that life, an imperfect thing, is inseparable from 
trial ; that difficulties are to be overcome, not to be avoided ; that 
the soul that shrinks into itself behind the ramparts of philosophic 
thought, will be discovered, and that cares will creep over the 
wall ; and that, finally, it is only by self-abandonment, and the 
annihilation of our own wills that we can foreshadow in life the 
peace of eternity. This is what the Lord meant when He said : 
" My peace I leave unto you ; my peace I give unto you ! Not 
as the world gives, do I give unto you ! " 

XVI. 

Nevertheless, whilst all this is true, there are secondary helps 
in reflection which are not to be despised. And one of these 
comes from retrospection. Remorse for failures or mistakes is 
foolish. They are part and parcel of our imperfection. The past 
should not be allowed to cast a shadow of gloom on the present, 
nor to project itself across our future. But it has its lessons — the 
supreme one, that anxiety is not only want of faith, but foolish in 
the extreme ; and the other, a lesson of supreme gratitude to the 
merciful Providence who has ordered our lives so peacefully. 
The little souls that fume and fret under the little worries and 
vexations of life, should often take up their diaries and read them. 
There they will see how trifling were the things that poisoned 
their daily happiness ; how insignificant the grains of dust that 
made the discord of their lives. A little courage would have 
brushed that dust aside and restored the soul to harmony and 
happiness. But no! we preferred the luxury of knowing that 
we were unhappy ; and grudged ourselves the little labor that 
would have restored concord and peace. Nay, most people nurse 
their miseries, and help them to grow, as if they believed that the 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. %$ 

monotony of peace were undesirable ; and that a life varied by 
vexations were preferable to a calm and equable existence free 
from worry, and mapped without the red or black lines that con- 
note disaster or suffering. 



XVII. 

Then, I would make such little souls walk the hospitals at 
least once a year. Nothing reconciles the unhappy to their lot, 
but to see others suffer more, and to see what they themselves 
have escaped. The philosopher who suffers from taedium vitae, 
the fine lady who is ennuyee, the querulous, the discontented, 
should see the possibilities of suffering that are, alas ! the inher- 
itance of our race. Here, within earshot of the busy hum of city 
life, is a staid building. No pretence to architecture without; 
within, everything sacrificed to cleanliness and neatness. A few 
yards away, on the pavements of the great city, the votaries of 
Vanity are sweeping by, their little frames filled out and decorated 
with all the appliances that Art and Fashion can invent. They 
walk with the proud gait, the stately movements of young gods 
and goddesses. The earth is theirs ; and theirs is the heritage of 
the sky and sea. Here, ranged in long rows, are the couches of 
their suffering sisters. Very low and humble they are, as their 
breasts heave with the convulsions of difficult breathing, for that 
tiny occult mechanism has built him a resting-place in their lungs, 
and is living by exhausting their life. Round, lustrous eyes, 
hectic cheeks, dry, hot hands, wet hair, are their signs and symbols 
of disease ; and creosote, formaldehyde, carbolic, have taken the 
place of the White Rose, or Heliotrope, which they shook from 
their raiment only a little while hence, as they spurned the very 
pavement beneath their feet. 

XVIII. 

Here again is another Temple of Hygeia, or rather of Death, 
for in these cancerous and tubercular cases the fair goddess is 
ruthlessly expelled by the skeleton god. Tossing on couches of 
pain, their entrails gnawed by the fell disease, or visibly rotting 



86 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

away from the disease in cheek, or tongue, or teeth, or breast, the 
poor victims linger on through a hell of agony, and invoke the 
King of Terrors in vain. And here is another Temple where 
some two thousand are lodged, — beings once rational, but now 
with reason dethroned, — helpless, animals, ships without a rud- 
der, tossed hither and thither through the stormy seas of their 
imaginings, with no power of guiding and directing themselves 
through the fierce impulses of animal instincts and desires. 
It is a cage for wild beasts. Witness the iron-barred windows, 
the padded cell, the various instruments of restraint, the strong 
men and women to cope with the paroxysms of insanity. And 
this is a Temple of Justice, wherein the elements dangerous to 
society are incarcerated. A thousand cells radiate from a central 
hall. In each is an outcast. Seated on a plank bed, staring at 
white-washed walls, fed like a beast through an aperture, each 
wretched soul ponders on his misery, eats his heart with remorse, 
or curses that society which, for its own safety and well-being, 
thinks it necessary to separate him from the rest of his fellow- 
mortals thus. 

XIX. 

And so, side by side, the gay and the sorrowful, Fortune's 
darlings and Destiny's victims, move, in a kind of Holbein pic- 
ture, toward the inevitable. Now, who hath cast the dice, and 
appointed the lots of each ? It is not merit, for in most cases 
my Lady of pain on her couch of suffering is a very much 
superior being to my Lady of pleasure on the pavement. But 
that is not the question now. The question now is, how can you 
repine at trifles, and fret yourself to death over imaginary 
troubles, like Moliere's Le Malade, when you have escaped the 
coffin, the hospital, the gaol, the Bedlam, and all their terrible 
concomitants ? And if you have come to middle age, or have 
mounted the mid-hill and crest of life, and are passing peacefully 
into the valley, how can you repine, when you have left so much 
misery behind you, and the fair vista of an honored old age 
stretches before you. Oh, but that disappointment ! That suc- 
cess of my neighbor's ! That prosperous marriage ! That success- 
ful speculation ! He taken and I left ! He with ten thousand a 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 8? 

year, and I with only five ! And he, with ten letters after his 
honored name, and I with only six ! Avaunt, thou ingrate ! Thou 
who hast never proven — 

How salt a savor hath 
The bread of others, and how hard a path 
To climb and to descend the stranger's stairs. 

XX. 

I would put side by side, in parallel columns with the Table 
of Sins in every Catholic prayer-book, an examination of escaped 
horrors thus : — 

Hast thou ever been under the surgeon's knife ? Hast thou 
ever seen the doctors in their white waterproofs, or bloodproofs, 
gaily chatting in the operation-room, and testing the edges of 
their knives, and thou on the table ? Hast thou seen the sponges 
and the lint, and the splinters, and the hot-water, and the nurses 
standing by the table, watching thee ? Hast thou ever known 
the sickening odor of the anaesthetic, which is to send thee into 
the unknown bourn, from which thou mayest never return ? Hast 
thou ever had sentence of death passed on thee by thy physician? 
That cough is phthisis ; that little nodule of flesh is incipient can- 
cer; that flush and chill is typhus; that sudden pain in thy left 
arm is cardiac trouble ; that inability to grasp thy pen is incipient 
paralysis ; that strange hesitation about thy words is brain dis- 
ease. Hast thou ever dreaded the slow approach of insanity? 
Hast thou, like a certain great Cardinal, lived all thy life beneath 
its horrible shadow ? Hast thou fallen into the grip of the law, 
and carried with thee the indelible stain of the prison ? Nay, do 
not frown down the question as impertinent. Did not Philip Neri 
say to Philip, as he saw a criminal haled to execution : There 
thou goest, Philip, but for the grace of God ! And if thou hast 
escaped all these things, and the many more too numerous to 
mention, go down on thy knees, and thank thy God for His 
mercies ! 

XXI. 

Thank God for the greatest mercy of all — that He has drawn 
down an impenetrable veil over thy future ; and lifts the curtains 



88 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of thy destiny, only fold by fold, and day by day. What would it be 
if the same Hand had unrolled for thee the map of thy life, and 
shown thee in thy adolescence all the terrors of thy future years ? 
How thou wouldst have glided over the pleasures of thy exist- 
ence with indifference, and fastened the eyes of thy imagination on 
the dangers and the pitfalls, the sorrows and the shames, that are 
marked so clearly on the diagram of thy existence ! How thou 
wouldst extenuate and make little of life's pleasures ; and ex- 
aggerate its pains ! And with what terrible foreboding wouldst 
thou approach crisis after crisis in thy life; and forget the chance 
of victory in the dread of defeat ! Verily, God is merciful ! It 
is only to His great martyrs, most of all to the Queen of Martyrs, 
that He reveals the far-off Mount of Suffering ; and allows the 
shadow of the three crosses cast by the setting sun of Olivet to 
darken the pathway of an entire life ! 

XXII. 

I wonder, is there a human being who would willingly take 
the ordering of his destiny out of the hands of Divine Providence, 
and cast the horoscope of his own life ? Would he accept the 
proposal if made to him thus : 

" Now you can frame and form your future according to your 
own desires. You can have all that the human heart may desire 
— wealth, position, honors, influence, old age. But you must 
accept with them their concomitants ; and the burden of your 
own imperfections. You can frame your future destiny ; but you 
must bear it on your own shoulders ; and look for no assistance 
from above." 

No Christian believer would accept such a proposal ; and it is 
doubtful even if a pure Agnostic would not shrink from the 
responsibility. We might elect to have the framing of our own 
futures, bit by bit ; but to round our whole lives in the circle of 
our fantasies and wishes is a something we would shrink from. 
And then there is always the possibility of disappointment and 
defeat with the self-reproach that would accompany both, if we 
made our own election. Now, if we fail, the failing is not of our 
own choosing. We can place it at the door of Destiny : or, with 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 89 

higher faith and meekness we can say it is the Will of God. But 
the sense of responsibility and remorse is absent, which would not 
be the case if disaster and defeat followed close in the wake of the 
voyage we had mapped for ourselves along the high seas of life. 
There ! What a meditation I have made over an open trunk ! ! 

XXIII. 

Swish, swish, comes still the rain ; but now it is night. The 
short day has wept itself out; and its narrow twilight has yielded 
to great, black night. All the greater security for you, my home- 
loving friend. It is dark at four o'clock, and here are five long 
hours of uninterrupted, unbroken peace with your books and 
pen. How the former glint and wink in the firelight and lamp- 
light ! All day they were dull and silent. They seem to feel 
that their time has now come, and they display all the finery of 
bookbinding to attract attention. I can almost imagine them say- 
ing, like the little children : " Take me ! Take me ! " and pouting, if 
left behind. W T hich shall I take ? Well, tastes vary. Sometimes, 
I take a violent fancy for biographies — the inner histories of 
remarkable men. I like to see them turned inside out, and all 
their greatnesses and all their weaknesses revealed. How im- 
perative a thing was genius ! How it compelled work even to 
the starveling, and compelled admiration even to the unwilling ! 
But, what an unhappy possession ! If happiness were the end 
and aim of existence, better be a hind than a poet, " a fool i' the 
forest " than a "swan of Avon." But this is the unvarying equi- 
librium of life : 

To learn in sorrow what they teach in song. 

XXIV. 

Sometimes, too, I put aside human lives, and wander abroad 
on the wings of travellers, away to the South, to the isles of the 
Mediterranean, bearing still on scarp and cliff the ruins of the 
great Romans. Further still, to the " Isles of Greece," haunted 
by all the melody of the ancient language, and by the ghosts of 
all the singers and heroes that are immortalized in verse, or statue, 



90 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

or drama. Further still, to the silent monasteries of the Levant, or 
the still more sequestered and archaic convents there above the 
ALgean Sea. Further still, to the shores of Palestine — the sacred 
land — the home at Nazareth, where I should like to live forever 
— the cave at Bethlehem — the Sea, where Christ walked upon the 
waters, and to whose voluptuous cities, now crumbling ruins, He 
preached. Further still, to Egypt with all its mystic religions 
buried beneath its sands, and only the Eternal Sphinx looking 
out with its pathetic eyes for the reincarnation of its deities. 
Further still, to the lands of the Kaaba, and the Fire-worship- 
pers, where the air is warm with hot scents above, and fetid with 
the germs of disease beneath near the surface. Further still, to 
the cradle of civilization, India, whence Aristotle drew his wis- 
dom — the land of the Vishnu, and Siva, and Siddartha; of strange 
mysterious rites, where the natural fades away into the super- 
natural, and the visible calls to the unseen; the edge of the mys- 
terious Orient, whence all faiths have come, to broaden out into 
mysticism and superstition, or to be concentrated into the vital 
and life-giving doctrines and ethics of Christianity. 

XXV. 

But I have two constant, never vaiying loves — my philoso- 
phers and my poets. I cannot conceive a greater mental pleasure 
or stimulant than the study of mental philosophy. It is, after all, 
the great study. It is so clear, so defined, so perfect in definition 
and principle and axiom, that you feel quite safe and walking on 
level ground, until suddenly the great gulf yawns under your 
feet, and beneath you is roaring the unplummeted sea. You look 
down, down. It is crystal-clear, but no soundings. Here Plato 
gazed, and Aristotle pondered ! Here Kant watched during his 
ninety years, only to turn away sadly in the end. Here, too, our 
child-philosophers of this unthinking age, fling their little lines 
weighted with modern discoveries. Alas ! they will not even sink 
beneath the surface. And the great deeps are still unfathomed, 
and the great gulf unspanned. And yet the quest is not unfruit- 
ful. If it only taught humility, it would be a great gain. But 
it does more. It is like the vision of the Holy Grail that : 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 91 

Drove them from all vainglories, rivalries, 

And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out 

Among us in the jousts, while women watch 

Who wins, who falls ; and waste the spiritual strength 

Within us, better offered up to Heaven. 

At least, we know of no dishonored Knight of Philosophy. Vota- 
ries of other sciences may be impure. And alas ! for our poets — 
the sacred fire does not always burn up carnal concupiscence. 
But Philosophy seems always to have kept her clients clean from 
grosser appetites and fleshly desires ; and if they erred, it was 
through the spirit, and not through the flesh. 

XXVI. 

There is no author so worshipped by youth, so contemned 
by experience, as Lord Macaulay. I remember turning over and 
over like a delightful sweetmeat in the mouth those words of his : 

' ' It was a scene which Salvator would have loved to paint ; and 
around which Claude Lorraine would have thrown all the glowing 
effulgence of the setting sun." 

I had another melodious caramel from Telemaque : 

II me mena jusqu'au vaisseau ; il demeura sur le rivage. 

These were the happy days when we did not trouble much 
about sense, so long as we had sound. But in more mature years, 
the impertinent logic of common sense interferes, and tells us 
that there is color-poison in that sweetmeat. In a word, that it is 
not true. And eveiy Macaulayite must suffer disillusion. Nay, 
it seems really surprising that such an omnivorous reader should 
have committed himself to so many utterly untenable positions. 
Words came to him too easily, and he wrote too rapidly to be 
accurate. And then, — well, then, the public forgives a good deal 
to its favorites ; and this he knew. But I think the most extrava- 
gant statement he made is that in his feeble essay on Lord Bacon, 
where he says : " The ancient philosophy was a treadmill, not a 
path. It was a contrivance for having much exertion and no 
progress. Every trace of intellectual cultivation was there, except 



92 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

a harvest. There had been plenty of ploughing, harrowing, reap- 
ing, thrashing. But the garners contained only smut and stub- 
ble." Macaulay does not conceal his sympathies with that purely 
utilitarian philosophy which places a shoemaker before a sage 
or a poet ; and thinks the discovery of the powers of steam of 
far more importance than the institution of Christianity. 

XXVII. 

But is it not strange that, although the Baconian philosophy 
is justly credited with all these mechanical and material improve- 
ments that go to make what is called progress in our day, 
the world, which utilizes these improvements, persists in placing 
the leaders of purely metaphysical thought in kingly supremacy 
over all the race ? Bacon himself descends to the rank of a 
second-rate philosopher, when placed side by side with a Hegel 
or a Fichte. No one would think of mentioning Stephenson in 
the same breath with Reid or Hamilton ; or, in our own days, of 
placing an Edison or Marconi on the same level with Herbert 
Spencer or Lotze. Man's mind will ascend, in spite of material 
conveniences, far above purely physical and transitory things, and 
will busy itself for ever in seeking to measure space and infinity. 
And it is not on the crutches of the inventions of natural philos- 
ophy, but on the wings of speculative thought, it will ever seek 
to penetrate the unknown. All that human ingenuity can ever 
devise will never reach beyond the wings of Icarus. Its desires, 
passions, ambitions, reach higher. Mechanical inventions or dis- 
coveries, however ingenious and useful, can never become aught 
but toys in the hands of a Child of the Infinite. One thing alone 
lifts him into the empyrean, the elevation of pure thought, subli- 
mated by faith, and raised by its power to regions otherwise 
impossible and inaccessible. 

XXVIII. 

All great writers have had their visions. " In sleep, in a 
vision of the night," revelations come. The Hebrew prophets 
stand out conspicuous by the multitude, the sublimity, or the 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 93 

horror of their dreams. Lucian seemed to have followed them, 
or imitated them. St. Augustine had his beautiful vision of Chas- 
tity, which left him in the agony of self-reproach, the prelude to 
his conversion. Every one knows the sublime picture of Philoso- 
phy drawn by the imagination of Boethius : 

" While I was pondering this in silence, and using my pen to 
set down so tearful a complaint, there appeared standing over my 
head a woman's form, whose countenance was full of majesty, 
whose eyes shone as with fire, and in powers of insight surpassed 
the eyes of men, whose color was full of life, whose strength was 
yet intact, though she was so full of years that none would ever 
think she was subject to such age as ours. One could but doubt 
her varying stature, for at one moment she repressed it to the 
common measure of a man, at another she seemed to touch with her 
crown the very heavens ; and when she had raised higher her 
head, it pierced even the sky, and baffled the sight of those who 
would look upon it. Her clothing was wrought of the finest 
thread by subtle workmanship brought to an indivisible piece. 
This had she woven with her own hands, as I afterwards did learn 
by her own shewing. Their beauty was somewhat dimmed by 
the dulness of long neglect, as is seen in the smoke-grimed 
masks of our ancestors. On the border below was inwoven the 
symbol II, 1 on that above was to be read a ®. 2 And between 
the two letters there could be marked degrees, by which, as by the 
rungs of a ladder, ascent might be made from the lower principle 
to the higher. Yet the hands of rough men had torn this gar- 
ment, and snatched such morsels as they could therefrom. In 
her right hand she carried books, in her left was a sceptre bran- 
dished." 

Macaulay can hardly have seen this description, especially the 
lines we have ventured to italicize. But it is easy to understand 
how the Reformers esteemed as a compliment, as he tells us in 
that same essay on Lord Bacon, the reproach that was so fiercely 
levelled at them : " Nullo apud Lutheranos philosophiam esse in 
pretio." 

1 UpaKiriK^. 
7 QcuprjTiK^. 



94 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XXIX. 

Macaulay, too, had his vision, as he tells us in the least- 
known, yet, perhaps, the best of his poems. This, too, was in 
woman's form : 

Oh, glorious lady, with the eyes of light, 
And laurels clustering round thy lofty brow, 

Who by the cradle's side didst watch that night, 
Warbling a sweet strange music, who wast thou ? 

The answer appears ambiguous ; for no one seems able to decide 
whether it was philosophy or literature. But, evidence inclines 
somewhat to the former ; and still more evidently to the former 
under any but a utilitarian aspect : 

Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme, 
The nether sphere, the fleeting hour resign ; 

Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream, 
Mine all the past ; and all the future mine. 

Fortune that lays in sport the mighty low, 
Age, that to penance turns the joys of youth, 

Shall leave untouched the gifts that I bestow, — 
The sense of beauty, and the thirst of truth. 

Of the fair brotherhood who share my grace, 
I, from thy natal day, pronounce thee free ; 

And if for some I keep a nobler place, 
I keep for none a happier than for thee. 

This would seem to point to Literature as personified by the 
Vision ; for Macaulay did not lay claim to be considered a philo- 
sopher. Yet, when she recalls her work, and her protection of 
her votaries, one is insensibly reminded of the figure that ap- 
peared to Boethius : 

In the dark hour of shame I deigned to stand 
Amid the frowning peers at Bacon's side ; 

On a far shore I smoothed with tender hand 

Through months of pain the sleepless bed of Hyde. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 95 

I brought the wise and great of ancient days 
To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone ; 

I lighted Milton's darkness with the blaze 

Of the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne. 

Still more shall we give our vote for Philosophy, when she makes 
her promises of protection and strength to her client : 

When friends turn pale, when envious traitors fly, 
When hard beset, thy spirit justly proud, 

For truth, peace, freedom, mercy, dares defy 
A sullen faction, and a raving crowd. 

Amid the din of all things, fell and vile, 

Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray, 

Remember me ; and with an unforced smile, 
See riches, baubles, flatterers, pass away. 

XXX. 

So it would seem that Lord Macaulay, the most successful 
man of letters of his generation, did experience that fine tonic of 
strong minds — the envy and jealousy of his contemporaries. It 
is strange that this curious and venomous antagonism does not 
seem to enter the sacred precincts of Art, nor yet the domain of 
Science. The reason is evident. Only experts who had passed 
through a professional training will venture to criticise a picture, or 
offer an opinion on a new discovery in Science. But in literature, 
everyone is qualified to judge ; and to reject or accept, condemn 
or magnify a new appearance. Philosophy, however, has her 
atonements and consolations. All will pass ! It is the book-mark 
of St. Teresa over again — honor, dishonor ; the smile, the sneer ; 
the glory, the gibe ; the laurel, the thorn ; all will pass : 

Yes, they will pass away ; nor deem it strange ; 

They come and go, as comes and goes the sea ; 
And let them come and go ; thou, through all change 

Fix thy firm gaze on Virtue and on me ! 



96 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XXXI. 

Some day, when science has made such advance that human 
labor will be required no longer, men will sleep by day, and watch 
the stars by night. For, of the two revelations of Nature which 
strike the senses, unquestionably that of darkness is the more 
magnificent. We see but one sun by day, and that a star of the 
second or third magnitude ; we see countless suns by night of 
every color and brilliancy. And scattered amongst them, here and 
there, vast nebulae, the seeds or laboratories of other universes ; 
and we know that creation and destruction, the weaving of gases 
into suns, and the dissolution of suns into gases ; and the evolution 
of planets around every sun ; and the creation and conservation 
of vast intelligences on each planet — that all these processes are 
eternally going on, there in the workshops of the Eternal Mind, that 
stretches in its vast immensity through space, and is ubiquitous in 
its operations as well as infinite by its presence. What is the little 
work of our planet, lighted by one pale star, to this ? What the 
birth of mere plants and flowers, the revolution of momentary 
seasons, the petty history of men, with their little wars and con- 
quests, compared to the vast operations of the universe ? You 
see littleness by day, greatness by night ; limitations in the sun- 
light, infinity in the dark ; man's little work by day, God's stu- 
pendous operations by night. And so, when we come to read more 
familiarly the book of the heavens, and astronomy becomes a 
popular, from being an occult science, men will watch the stars all 
night ; and derive from the evergrowing wonder and mystery of 
the Universe deeper veneration and greater love for the Mighty 
Spirit that rules and operates through all. 

XXXII. 

Hence in the olden times when men thought much, and spoke 
little, they deemed the darkness divine. 'X2 to Belov cr/coro?, " O 
divine darkness ! " said the Areopagite. " Who hath made the 
darkness his hiding-place," said that great thinker St. Paul, and 
there " dwelleth in light inaccessible." " If you pierce this dark- 
ness," said Nazianzen, " who will flash forth ? " Yes ! darkness 
filleth space. Darkness is the ocean ; the suns are but the lamps 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 97 

that float hither and thither on its surface. Consider only that 
immense field of utter and impenetrable darkness that stretches 
from the remotest orb of our solar system to the nearest fixed 
star! With the tremendous velocity of light — 186,000 miles in a 
second — it takes four hours to traverse our solar system, and 
reach its outer world, Neptune, or to bring back one ray to 
us from that remote and solitary world. But what is that to the 
awful chasm of darkness that lies beyond ? For, from Neptune, 
a soul winged with the velocity of light would take not four min- 
utes, but four years to reach the next sun and system ! What a 
black yawning immensity ! What a universe of darkness ! Look- 
ing back even from its threshold, our sun is but a glinting and 
flickering star; the planets are invisible. Very soon the sun 
itself dies out in the darkness, and all is night, night ! Once and 
again in a century, perhaps, a mighty comet comes dashing out 
of space, as an express train would flash out of a tunnel, and 
swishes away with its long streamers of light into the darkness 
again. At intervals, there is a rumble or crash of the debris of 
worlds that broke up centuries ago. All else is midnight or 
gravelike blackness, until we break into the light of Alpha Cen- 
tauri y and behold the sister-suns, for ever gravitating towards each 
other, and for ever kept apart by the Invisible Hand ; and wheel- 
ing in circles of light around their resplendence, vast planets, 
drinking in life and beauty, and sweetness, from these glorious 
lamps in the streets of the Eternal City ! And, away once more 
through another ocean of darkness to the light of a more trans- 
cendent sun ! 

XXXIII. 

It struck me, one of these cold frosty nights in late Decem- 
ber, as I walked to and fro in my garden, and saw the surpassing 
splendors of the Winter constellations, — what a cataclysm there 
would be, if that Infinite Hand were lifted for a moment from 
His Creation. No one, even the most sceptical, denies that Law, 
Supreme, Inexorable Law, guides and governs our Universe. But 
Law is merely another word for Will. So surely as the mariner's 
hand is on the helm of his ship, or the finger of the engineer is 
on the throttle of his express engine, so surely is the Hand of 



98 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

God upon the mighty mechanism of His universe. Of course, 
worlds break up with their tremendous concussions, and scatter 
their fragments through space, to be resolved again into their 
original gases. Suns, too, are quenched, and their corresponding 
planets starved out of life, and frozen into lunar deserts. But 
this is only part and parcel of the Divine Economy, that builds 
out of ruin, and breaks only to reconstruct on a larger and 
greater plan. But let us suppose that a sun, like our own, could 
break from its moorings in space, and, taking the whole system 
with it, should plunge across the deserts of the universe, and 
cany its tremendous and liberated forces into the orbits of other 
suns and systems ; and let us suppose that these, in turn, struck 
by this terrific and lawless energy, should be driven from their 
orbits, and carry their weight and velocities into the heart of 
other systems, until all were driven from their centres, where 
they had swung in perfect equilibrium, — what a fearful cataclysm 
it would be ! What ruin upon ruin, destruction upon destruction 
would ensue! What conflagrations would light up the black 
deserts of interstellar spaces ; and what glowing and incandescent 
gases, liberated by such gigantic convulsions, would stream across 
the universe ! What awful thunders would shake the foundations 
of earth and rock the thrones of Heaven ! And how all would 
finally settle down into primeval chaos, and darkness would fold 
its wings over a universe once more dissolved into atoms ! 

XXXIV. 

What a grotesque, beautiful, ridiculous, sublime, a little being 
is Man ! Hanging on for a brief moment by the slender foothold 
he has on that little bubble in space, the Earth, — he looks out 
from its darkened side into the Immensities that wheel above 
him ; and he wants to understand them all, nay, to grasp them in 
his tiny fingers, and with his little mind. An insect, looking out 
with wide, wondering eyes from an oak leaf in a forest, and feel- 
ing his way timorously with his antennae, is not more insignifi- 
cant. And yet, this man is in reality the mystery of the universe. 
For the latter is intelligible enough ; and to larger comprehen- 
sion, even simple in its greatness. And it also demands God. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 99 

He, too, is intelligible, because He is all greatness and sublimity. 
There is no need for reconcilements and adjustments there. All 
is simple ; and all is great. But Man — " Gentlemen," said Fichte, 
in his introductory lecture on " The Destination of Man," in the 
University of Jena, " collect yourselves — go into yourselves — for 
we have here nothing to do with things without, but simply with 
the inner self." They drew themselves together. " Gentlemen," 
he continued, " think the wall (Denken Sie die Wand)." They 
thought the wall. " Now, gentlemen, think him who thought the 
wall." Not so easy. There was evident embarrassment. They 
shuffled in their seats. Some rose up. The wall was easy 
enough. They themselves were the mystery ! 

XXXV. 

Yes, say what we will, Man is the Mystery of Creation. God 
is no mystery to Himself, nor perhaps to the colossal intelligences 
that He has created. Nay, our own poor reason reaches to His 
existence at least. We see immensities and worlds swimming in 
space ; but see also order, law, everywhere. And we know there 
must be an Ordainer and a Legislator. And then we mount, step 
by step, to His ineffable attributes. It is only when we turn our 
eyes inward on ourselves, that we are smitten with astonishment. 
For, whereas all without us is cosmical, uniform, perfect, all within 
us is chaotic and contradictory. We are a miracle and a mystery 
to our own comprehension. We know, but cannot tell why we 
know. Our senses are the sources or rather the conduits of 
knowledge, yet they deceive us. Our passions degrade us, or 
elevate us. To-day we grovel in the sty of Epicurus ; to-mor- 
row, our desires waft us into the empyrean. Our fellowmen are 
infinitely lovable, and infinitely hateful. Brute and angel, like the 
Woman Beast that stares across the Egyptian sands, we watch for 
the reading of the riddle ; but, unlike her, we cannot wait. 

XXXVI. 

One of the most repulsive things I ever read is de Quincey's 
description of the nebula of Orion. You will find it in his 



100 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

article on "The System of the Heavens," in Volume III of his 
works. It is a fantasy, but an extremely morbid one. He sees 
in what is now recognized as one of the most beautiful objects in 
the heavens " the horror of a regal phantasma which it has per- 
fected to eyes of flesh." "All power being given to the awful 
enemy, he is beautiful where he pleases, in order to point and 
envenom his ghostly ugliness." " Brutalities unspeakable sit upon 
the upper lip, which is confluent with a snout ; for separate nostrils 
there are none." " But the lower lip, which is drawn inwards with 
the curve of a marine shell — oh, what a convolute of cruelty and 
revenge is there ! Cruelty ! — to whom ? Revenge ! — for what ? 
Pause not to ask ; but look upwards to other mysteries ! " Prob- 
ably, one of the greatest of these mysteries is, how the human 
mind could draw on the deep background of the infinities such a 
picture of horror and ugliness. It is the dream of one in delirium 
— the horrid spectre of a mind distorted by drugs, and weaving on 
the mirrors of infinite space the revolting pictures that are drawn 
on its own warped and twisted and shapeless faculties. True ! it 
lasted only for a moment. The imagination gradually resolved 
itself into gentle and harmonious lines drawn by reason ; and he 
says : " He is now a vision to dream of, not to tell ; he is ready 
for the worship of those that are tormented in sleep ; and the 
stages of his solemn uncovering by astronomy are like the re- 
versing of some heavenly doom, like the raising of one after 
another of the seals that had been sealed by the angel in the 
Revelation." 

XXXVII. 

What a contrast with the Greek mythology, pictured in the 
constellations ! How these grest artists, in the dawn of civilization, 
drew on the map of Night their own healthy dreams ! If, on their 
stages, they represented horror after horror, tragedy after tragedy, 
it was a kind of religious symbolism, marking the doctrine of 
Fate, and the steady Nemesis that follows upon and dogs the foot- 
steps of crime ; but, when they ascended on high, and drew on 
the heavens their symbols of immortality — the apotheoses of their 
heroes and their gods — they drew nothing revolting or inhuman 
or sanguinary; but wove the eternal stars into their legends of 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 101 

heroism and duty, and cast around the burning constellations a 
drapeiy of music, and painting, and sculpture, — put Cassiopeia on 
her throne, sent Perseus to rescue Andromeda, joined the Hunt- 
ing Dogs in " their leash of sidereal fire," drew the imaginary 
chords of light across the framework of Lyra, put a sword into 
the hunter's hands, and swung another at his jewelled belt, and 
fretted the long filaments of light into the hair of the queen who 
sacrificed hers in the temple of Venus to ensure the return of her 
husband. 

XXXVIII. 

There is no doubt that Greek thought was healthy thought. 
And health brought beauty ; and beauty has brought immortality. 
How much of modern thought, especially of modern poetry, may 
be traced to the influences of opium, would be a nice question to 
determine. It seems that with many writers the brain will not 
work at its highest capacity, unless under the influence of the drug. 
Most of our modern writers have come under its spell. We owe 
some of the most spiritual and imaginative poetry to its inspi- 
rations. Some poets could never have touched the high altitudes 
they reached but for its help. Yet, the highest is not the healthiest, 
at least in common estimation. The human Shakspere is placed 
above the divine Dante, because he is human. There is something 
in the subject, as well as in its treatment. The sober Dante, in- 
toxicated only by genius, ascended into the highest empyrean of 
human thought ; the equally sober Shakspere touched ordinary 
humanity to transfigure it. But Coleridge could not have written 
the "Ancient Mariner," nor Shelley his marvellous " Prometheus," 
were not their imaginations excited by laudanum. Then, who 
shall say that the divine dreams come by inspiration, or who 
shall say the reverse ? Or who shall mark the healthy from the 
morbid elements that go to compose that curious amalgam called 
Literature ? 

XXXIX. 

What a contrast between that morbid conception of a monster, 
cruel and merciless, into which the imagination of de Quincey 



102 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

turned the nebula of Orion, and the concluding passage from 
Richter, in the same essay. It is the voyage of a human being 
into the infinite. 

" Suddenly, as thus they rode from infinite to infinite, suddenly, 
as thus they tilted over abyssmal worlds, a mighty cry arose — that 
systems more mysterious, worlds more billowy — other heights, 
and other depths — were dawning, were nearing, were at hand. 
Then the man sighed, stopped, shuddered, and wept. His over- 
laden heart uttered itself in tears, and he said : 'Angel, I will 
go no further. For the spirit of man aches under this infinity. 
Insufferable is the glory of God's house. Let me lie down in the 
grave, that I may find rest from the persecutions of the Infinite ; 
for end, I see, there is none.' And from all the listening stars 
that shone around issued one choral chant — ' Even so it is; angel, 
thou knowest that it is ; end there is none, that ever yet we heard 
of ' End is there none ? ' the angel solemnly demanded. 'And 
is this the sorrow that kills you ? ' But no voice answered, that 
he might answer himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious 
hands to the heaven of heavens, saying : ' End is there none to 
the universe of God ? Lo ! also there is no beginning.' " 

There is a deep and solemn truth in that line : " The spirit of 
man aches under infinity ! " He is not equal to it. Its vastness 
weighs upon him like a thick atmosphere on feeble lungs. Like 
one, lost in a desert, the solitude appals him, and he cries aloud 
for help, for companionship. 



XL. 

Yet, what a wayward being he is ! All his aspirations are 
towards the infinite that oppresses him. He loathes his prison — 
the earth ; he despises his fellow-prisoners. Humanity is beneath 
him ; the earth is too small to bear him. Looking through the 
bars of his prison-house, across the levels of twilight seas, he 
yearns to go out and be lost in the sun-mists that gather away on 
the horizon ; and if a faint sail shimmers on the line of the sky 
and sea, it is to him the burden, and the jealous burden of a soul, 
that, emancipated, is pursuing its happy way to the Infinite. So, 
too, does he dream in mountain solitudes, looking up from vale 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 103 

to peak, and from peak to cloud, happy in the thought that some 
day he may go thither, unhappy in the reflection that "his 
sojourning is prolonged." Yet, give him this infinity whilst still 
in the flesh, and lo ! he " aches under it." He tires of stars and 
systems. His wonder ceases when his imagination is satiated. 
Knowledge destroys the magic and the mystery of the Universe. 
The wilderness of galaxies becomes an unpeopled solitude. He 
is perishing amidst the splendors of space. He cries aloud in his 
agony. He wants the earth, and men ! 



XLI. 

Yes ! till disembodied, earth is his home — the little theatre of 
his sufferings and joys. Here he is placed by the Omnipotent; 
and here he has to accomplish his destiny. He is finite and must 
take his limitations. His wings will not bear him far towards the 
Infinite. They grow weary and droop, and he falls. Yes ! here 
on this little planet are his destinies environed by time and space. 
Here shall he find the little loves, the little cares, the little wor- 
ries, the little joys, that make up his daily experience. How- 
ever high he soars in the empyrean, a line draws him back to 
earth. He is an imprisoned immortal. He is created for the 
Infinite, but not permitted to seek his place as yet. That will 
come. Meanwhile, let him dream and aspire, for that is good, 
and reminds him that here he hath no lasting habitation. But he 
must not despise the little part he has to play on this planet, nor 
must he segregate himself too much from sympathies with his 
own feeble and much-complaining race. And there are two 
watchwords to inspire him — one, the password of the night- 
watch — Duty! and one, the password of the relief at dawn; and 
that is — Destiny! 

XLIL 

And yet, what an insolent and insatiable little parasite he is ! 
Knowledge begets wonder ; and wonder gives way to contempt. 
Tell him all the fairy tales of science ; and his open, round eyes 
stare at you, first in incredulity, and then in surprise. Tell him 



104 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

that the Demon-star, Algol, is twice as large as our sun ; that its 
dark satellite, moving only 3,000,000 miles apart, is the same size 
as our sun, with a density one-fourth as great ; that this satellite 
extinguishes its own luminary for us for a space of twenty minutes 
every two days and ten hours, — he stands still in surprise, stares 
at the celestial prodigy, weighs it in his own mind, until this 
latter growing under the exercise, first equals, then surpasses 
the limits of the wonderful ; and then growing far beyond it, 
looks on it with a certain contempt. Or, tell him the two com- 
ponent stars of Mizar are forty times as great as the mass of our 
sun, 150,000,000 miles apart from each other, and moving with a 
velocity of fifty miles a second ; his little mind strives to battle 
with these stupendous figures, then seizes them and holds them ; 
then in its marvellous elasticity surrounds them and encompasses 
them in the net of his own imagination ; finally, goes so far beyond 
them that it regards them as infinitesimal accidents in space. 
Nay, you cannot tire it, nor exhaust it. The circumference of 
human thought is conterminous with the horizon of space ! 

XLIII. 

What then does Richter mean, when he speaks of the soul 
"aching" under the Infinite? Clearly, he means the Infinite 
Void— the Material Infinite ! It is the hollow eye of Infinity, 
bare of God, that glares on him and terrifies him. The sense of 
infinite solitude becomes unbearable — such solitude as oppresses 
the mind when one stands beneath the crater of Vesuvius, knee- 
deep in hot ashes, and sees above him a canopy of fire, and all 
around the horrors of utter desolation. Viewed thus, creation 
becomes simply a universe of volcanic forces, pitched and heaved, 
hither and thither in endless chaos, the little planetary worlds 
with their tiny and solitary sweetness, insignificant oases in the 
deserts of infinity. It was such a vision as the fiend' saw, when 
Sin opened the eternal gates : — 

Before their eyes in sudden view appear 

The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark 

Illimitable ocean, without bound, 

Without dimension, where length, breadth and height, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. I OS 

And time and place are lost ; where oldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
Eternal anarchy amidst the noise 
Of endless wars and by confusion stand. 

In this " vast vacuity," this " womb of Nature, and perhaps 
her grave," man's spirit faints away. The senses of sight and 
hearing are smitten with the tumult and din of worlds hustling 
through unlighted space. He sinks down, and cries : " Father, 
where art Thou ! " 

XLIV. 

Why then is the little being so impatient of his lot ; so eager 
for the Infinite ? Because it is not the infinity of emptiness, but 
the immensity of God he is unconsciously seeking. It is not the 
universe he wants ; but the God of the Universe. The end and 
term of his existence found, he seeks no more. He no longer 
aches under infinity ; but basks in its immensities. He no longer 
dreads the hollow eye of Nature ; because he knows the eye of 
the Father is upon him ; he no longer dreads the awful mechanism 
around him, because he knows he is in the workshop of his 
Friend. And the vast deserts of the Universe are closed to his 
sight by the 

. empyrean Heaven, extended wide, 
In circuit, undetermined square or round, 
With opal towers and battlements adorned, 
Of living sapphire, once his native seat : 



and 



. . . the Almighty Father from above 
From the pure empyrean where He sits, 
High throned above all height, bends down His eye 
His own works and their works at once to view. 
About Him all the sanctities of heaven 
Stand thick as stars, and from His sight receive 
Beatitude past utterance. 



106 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XLV. 

I dare say this idea of the limitation of human action and 
feeling, and the eternal craving after the infinite and illimitable in 
the human mind can be seen exemplified in most human lives. 
Especially is it observable in men of thought or fine sensibilities. 
But I have seen it confessed clearly only in two lives, that of St. 
Augustine, as revealed in his Co?ifessions ; and that of Maine 
de Biran, as revealed in his Thoughts. This latter was one of those 
unhappy immortals, who to their own sorrow, but the everlasting 
benefit of mankind, have been tortured by nerves. He was so 
finely constructed that his emotions swayed to the slightest touch, 
swinging low down in the deepest depression at a word or look or 
a reverse or a dyspepsia; and again thrown high into the empy- 
rean of exalted reflection by equally minute and trifling causes. 
These Pensees would be pitiful reading were they not relieved 
here and there by gleams of inspiration — great lightning-flashes 
of thought athwart the low thunder clouds of despondency. His 
life was an alternation of desires for solitude when in society, and 
impatience of self when in solitude. " La commerce des hommes," 
he writes, " m'a gate et me gate tous les jours " ; but he was 
forever craving for their companionship amongst the woods and 
waters of Grateloup. " I walk like a somnambulist in the world 
of affairs." But when it came to the point to choose, he refused 
to say the word, and turned back to politics. He is a stranger 
amidst the pomps and ceremonies of the French Court ; he hates 
himself for his presence there, and his nervous unsuitableness ; 
but he cannot remain away. He clamors for the infinity of 
thought in solitude ; but craves for the limitations of action in 
society. 

XLVI. 

Very early in life, and long before he became a Christian in 
thought and feeling, he recognized the dual nature in man ; and 
writes strongly against Voltaire and Condillac, and all the tribe of 
writers of the sensist or materialist school. He will not admit the 
sovereignty of sense ; he demands the supremacy of the soul. 
Granted. But does he find peace ; the peace for which he is for- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 07 

ever clamoring? He admits it is the summum bonum, nay, the 
only good here below. He confesses his contempt for the things 
which the world prizes. He has seen them, and tested their 
hollowness. He flies from them and buries himself in the desert 
of his own soul. The philosophy of the Porch is now his religion. 
He will be self-sufficing. He will subdue all riotous feeling of 
passion and even sensation ; and, under the arbitrary rule of the 
soul, he will find peace. He will desire nothing, and therefore 
want nothing. All shall be harmony of nicely adjusted thoughts 
and sentiments, of passions subdued and reined by a strong hand ; 
Nature shall yield its manifold treasures of peaceful bliss ; and an 
imagination, rightly controlled, will serve to lift the soul beyond 
time and death, and project another existence on the canvas of 
eternity. But the oaks and streams heard still but the agony 
of a disappointed and despairing soul. Yes ! all was satisfied, 
but the insatiable — La Soif de Dieu ! 

XLVII. 

He liked, as all such souls like, every line that speaks of the 
beauty and happiness of a solitary life. And all literature, 
Divine and human, is replete with those threnodies of the heart — 
the desire to be away, and at rest. " Would that I had the wings 
of a dove " ; " O for a lodge in some vast wilderness ! " Was the 
author of the " Imitation," merely parodying the words of St. 
Augustine in all the many curious ways he had of uttering the 
same thought: u Noli for as abire ; in teipsum redi ; in i?zteriore 
homine habitat Veritas ! " And I suppose most people (always ex- 
cepting the artists themselves) must have felt a little attendrissement 
du coeur at the closing lines of that favorite duet in Trovatore : 
" There shall be rest ! there shall be rest ! " Certain it is that 
Maine de Biran was forever craving rest, rest, rest — from the fever 
of fashion, from the turmoil of politics, from the stings of wasps, 
the hollowness and insincerity of the world ; and he was for ever 
dreaming, dreaming in the Court of Versailles or at the Tuileries 
of his woods and walks, of the rustling leaves, the singing of 
birds, the purling of streams, the peace of the mountains, the soli- 
tude of the valleys. Then came the reality. Lo ! here is all 



IOS UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

this sylvan beauty ; and here is solitude deep enough for a Bruno ! 
And here is peace, and deep profound thought, and the absorption 
of the soul in the reveries of metaphysics. Alas, no! or not 
altogether. A cloudy sky, an indiscretion at table, a look, a 
word ; and lo ! the paradise is broken up. So dependent is the 
soul on the caprices of the body ! There are two principles in 
man — et primum quod est animate ! 



XLVIII. 

" Bene qui latuit, bene vixit ! " It was a favorite maxim of Des- 
cartes who had also another favorite doctrine, which I recommend 
earnestly, namely, the sanitary value to mind and body, of long 
fits of idleness. Maine de Biran would not, and did not, accept 
the latter. He could not. He was made otherwise, a thing com- 
pacted out of nerves, and fed by a planet and a star — by Mercury 
and Phosphor. He knew well the glorious blessing of such a 
constitution, and — its curse ! He admits that the dull, practical, 
geometrical reasoner has less joy out of youth, but more security 
in age. And that if the nervous dreamer and thinker has visions 
of the gods in his heyday, he must suffer by diabolic apparitions 
in the evening of his days. It is the eternal equilibrium of things 
— the just apportionment of fate to mortals. The most careful 
chemist does not sift and mix on his glass measure the drugs that 
make for life or death so carefully as the Fates dole out their des- 
tinies to mortals. Or, rather, not destinies, but the factors of des- 
tinies — the powers of action or suffering, of reason and imagina- 
tion, of mental or physical constituents, that go to construct the 
sum total of those transient dreams or experiences which we call 
Life. 



XLIX. 

But the maxim of Descartes : " Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, " 
he loved it, but did not accept it. Or rather, accepted it only in 
theory. It is the motto of those who are surfeited by fame, or 
notoriety ; not of those who have never tasted either. Men can 
despise riches when they possess them ; fame, when the fickle 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 109 

goddess woos them. But all men would like to drink from the 
cup of Tantalus, and grasp the skirts of the phantom, Fame. 
Yet, Maine de Biran, let it be said, had even a nobler ambition. 
He deplores the necessity of his taking part in political and social 
matters to the exclusion of intellectual pursuits, for which he be- 
lieved he possessed a certain aptitude. And life was passing by ; 
and nothing done. All this externation which he detested, but 
which arrested every movement towards the life of solitude and 
retreat which he coveted, induced at least a condition of intellect- 
ual atrophy from want of exercise ; and he saw himself far ad- 
vanced into middle age, without the prospect or hope of realizing 
his one ambition — " avoir laisse quelque monument honorable de 
son passage sur la terre." A victim of circumstances, a prey to 
ill-health, with all the power and the desire of becoming the fore- 
most thinker of his age, he remained to the end — un philosophe 
manque. 



It is quite clear that thought and existence are not identical ; 
and that each must have its own rules, aspirations, conditions. 
For example, the illimitable sea at sunset, with just one solitary 
sail on its way to infinity, fills us with the strongest emotions. 
We can gaze and gaze at it for ever. It is a soul, emancipated, 
and passing out on its voyage to the unknown eternities. But, lo ! 
some one says : Beneath that line is the coast of France ; and that 
schooner is bound for Cherbourg ! The spell is broken ! Why ? Be- 
cause the abstract, the illimitable, is suddenly bounded by the con- 
crete and determined ; and the soul beats itself against that rude and 
imperious barrier. Or we watch the heavy rain-clouds, these winter 
evenings, driven up and on by the southwest wind. Their gloomy 
battalions file over our heads, black and threatening, like the 
remnants of a conquered army, driven on before the exultant con- 
querors. We can see them, with some pleasure, drifting, drifting 
towards the unseen northeast. It is an undefined, an abstract 
destination. But, let some one say : The clouds are drifting over 
such or such a mountain ; they are now above such a town, now 
over such a village. Again, the spell is broken ! We don't care 



110 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

to watch them any longer. They are no longer creatures of the 
infinite. We see them swoop down, and draw their wet skirts 
across the mountain heather ; or the roofs of houses, and then 
vanish in mere rain and storm. 



LI. 

What is the fittest form of worship in the temple of the Eternal, 
under that awful dome of blackness that leans on the horizons of 
infinity ? If we consider for a moment the total want of propor- 
tion between our weak praise and the immensity of God, we are 
tempted to take refuge with the mystics, and say, Silentium sit 
lans ! St. Augustine seems to have felt most intensely this utter 
inadequacy of man to sing worthily the praises of God. " When 
the Psalmist cried out, l Magnus Dominus et laudabilis minis, 
quoniam magnitudinis ejus non est finis] he wanted to show," says 
St. Augustine, " how great He is. But how can this be done ? 
Though he repeated, great, great, the whole day, it would have 
been to no purpose, because he must have ended at last, for the 
day must be ended. But His greatness was before the beginning 
of days, and will reach beyond the end of time." So, too, says that 
wonderful old poet-saint, Lynesius, of whom we know but too 
little : 

'Tfivco o-e, Met/cap, 

Kat hid cjxovas. 
'Tfuxw ae, Maxa/3, 

Kat hid crtyas. 
"Ocra yap (frcovas 

Tocra zeal aiyas 

Ai'et? voepas 

TLdrep dyvware, 

Hdrep apprjre. 

Whilst all this is true, it is also true that we need a language 
of praise. Does not the Evangelist place the very words in the 
mouths of the Seraphim, by which they may glorify God ? 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. Ill 

LII. 

And what more worthy language ever was, or could be, in- 
vented for this sacred purpose than the Psalms of David ? I have 
an idea that our piety, as Catholics, would be more robust, and 
that we would be brought more close to God, if the inspired 
words, the language of the Holy Spirit, formed a larger portion of 
our daily prayers. We have many and excellent books of devo- 
tion ; but after all they are compiled by men, and breathe but a 
human language. But the words of Scripture are the words of 
the Holy Spirit ; and they are winged with the fiery tongues of 
the Paraclete. Could there be, for example, a more sublime act 
of charity than the seventeenth Psalm, Diligam te, Domine, with 
the sublime poetry of the verses 8-17 ; or a more piteous appeal 
for mercy than Psalm 2 1 , Deus, Detcs mens, respice in me, with 
all its pathetic foreshadowing of the Passion ; or a more glorious 
bit of nature-painting than Psalm 103, Benedic, anima mea, Domi- 
num ; or, lastly, a more tender and childlike profession of faith 
and obedience than Psalm 118, which is so familiar to us in the 
daily Office, and which I had marked twenty golden years ago in 
my Douay Bible as Pascal's Psalm ? 

LIIL 

That is a fine expression of Plato's, Lux est umbra Dei. Light 
is the shadow of God. Et Deus est Lumen Luminis. And God 
is the Light of Light. How closely his language approaches the 
words of the Nicene Creed ! Could they have been adapted from 
him by those Oriental Fathers ? The idea runs through the whole 
of the inspired writings. " He dwelleth in light inaccessible." 
" Erat lux vera." And the " Lamb was the lamp thereof." Yet 
we read that He is surrounded by darkness. " He bound the 
heavens and came down ; and darkness was under His feet. And 
He made darkness His covert ; His pavilion round about Him ; 
dark waters in the clouds of the air." This, and other figurative 
language would seem to convey the idea that God, the Light, is 
hidden away in His creation, not like a far sun localized in a de- 
fined space of darkness, but permeating as a hidden force all space 



112 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

and all darkness, as lightning is concealed in the dark folds of a 
cloud. And, as lightning is hardly seen in light, but illumines a 
whole world in the darkness of the night ; so it is at night, God's 
illumination breaks upon the soul of man, and He feels all around 
him the presence of the Divinity. 



LIV. 

For, it was really a happy thought of that mediaeval writer, 
who wrote so little but so well, that it is darkness that reveals to 
us the universe. If there were no night, but perpetual day, man 
could never have reached a conception of the immensity and 
grandeur of the heavens. We should see the blue vault of heaven 
without knowing it was a sea of darkness in which the lightships 
of God floated. We should know our sun, and have a dim idea 
of the moon as a bright silver cloud, but no more. Lo ! darkness 
envelopes the earth, and reveals the heavens. Here, from his 
little watchtower, the eye of the little creature takes in all the 
vastness and sublimity that lie around him ; he sees himself on 
the lonely deck of a little ship in space. He knows his insignifi- 
cance and God's greatness and he is humble. Lo ! once more 
come the dawn and the light. The curtains of the night are 
drawn ; immensity vanishes ; the little ark of humanity swells to 
a vast world where he is king and master. And all the vast de- 
ceptions of life, which had faded before infinity, throng around 
him once more to cheat his senses and flatter his pride. The 
ghosts do not vanish at dawn ; they are the creatures, not of dark- 
ness, but of light. 

LV. 

Hence, I suppose, that saying of Euripedes : fiaOvrepat, yap 
vvktos <f>peve<;. Night-thoughts are deepest. The sense of im- 
mensity, the darkness, shutting out all those myriad sensible 
objects that fret and distract the mind, the silence, always 
unbroken except by soothing sounds of winds or waterfalls — 
all these help to cast back the mind upon itself, and by concen- 
trating its faculties, to intensify thought and subdue emotion. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 13 

Could this be the reason, apart from the leisure it afforded, why 
the Son of God found strength and respite by spending the night 
in prayer in the solitude of mountains ? This was foreshadowed, 
as the Psalmist foreshadowed the Divine Being Himself, by the 
midnight prayer of David. Media 7iocte surgebam ad confitendum 
tibi. And all the saints have loved the night-prayer. There is no 
hour so dear to them as the Matin-hour, which is in deepest dark- 
ness, as it precedes the dawn. And is it not proverbial that 
scholars love the time of night-thoughts ; and that " burning the 
midnight oil " has passed into a metaphor for lonely studies at the 
deepest part of the night ? Yes, we want solitude to think deeply, 
and " night uttereth knowledge to night " in other senses than the 
Psalmist meant. 

LVI. 

If all knowledge comes through the senses, that knowledge 
must be necessarily limited, for our senses are very weak. The 
lower animals possess senses far more acute than ours, as their 
anticipations of atmospheric changes clearly demonstrate. Nay, 
even, they seem to be able to forecast great cataclysms on earth, 
as they manifest signs of perturbation and fear before earthquakes 
or volcanic eruptions, where man sees no cause for alarm. The 
sense of hearing with us seems the dullest of the senses. We feel 
the heat of the sun, and rejoice in his light. But what of the 
tremendous reverberations and thunders that are forever flung into 
space from the convulsions of that mighty furnace ? Not a sound 
reaches us. Here, to all outward seeming, is a meek sun, shed- 
ding beneficent heat and light on his satellites, and silently per- 
forming his allotted duty in the universe. But reason will not 
tolerate this assumption. It argues that if a tiny black cloud, 
perched half a mile above the earth, can vomit flame and thunder, 
so as to drown the loudest noises on earth, what an unimaginable 
tumult of sound breaks from that fiery furnace, which flings out 
its waves of flame a quarter of a million of miles beyond its sur- 
face. Now, wherefore this waste ? The heat and light of the sun 
are not scattered objectless through space. Why should sound? 
Or, has it a purpose in Nature, which, though it never reaches 
us, is nevertheless accomplished ? 



H4 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LVII. 

It is really difficult for us to get rid of the idea that this little 
planet of ours is the centre of the universe, that all space revolves 
around it as on a pivot, and that all things in heaven and on earth 
were made for man. Our pride is always striving to disprove what 
reason and science assert. Yet we shall never understand things 
until we get outside ourselves ; nor shall we ever grasp the secret 
of the universe until we begin to acknowledge the weakness of 
our understanding. " My thoughts are not as your thoughts," 
said the Lord ; " nor My ways as your ways." All that science, 
with its Argus eyes, has hitherto testified is this : Space is a uni- 
verse of darkness, and the murk of midnight, and cold, pierced 
here and there by suns, which, though to our imaginations they 
are colossal and gigantic, are nevertheless pinpoints of light in the 
vast deserts around them. These lamps in the midnight are sur- 
rounded by tiny moths of planets, that are forever seeking to 
destroy themselves in the flame, but are kept apart by an unseen 
hand. And that is all. Yes, all to the limited faculties and pur- 
blind sight of this little parasite called man. But what if that 
desert of darkness were transcendent light to other eyes than ours ; 
and what if outside our limited cognizance, the vast regions of 
space were all light and no darkness ; and what if the irregular 
patches of constellations stretched themselves, in obedience to the 
eternal law of cosmical symmetry and beauty, into a great line of 
light, sentinelling the outer darkness of our space, and forming a 
mighty cordon around the white central throne ; and what if, after 
all, " the music of the spheres " and " stars quiring to the young- 
eyed Cherubim " were more than poetic fancies, and that, in fact, 
the whole universe is eternally resonant with praise ; and that the 
tumultuous thunders of countless suns and worlds are toned down 
into the organ accompaniment of the Hosannas that echo forever, 
and forever and ever, around the great Throne of God ! Clearly, 
there is nothing for us, little ephemerae as we are, but to sit still, 
and see the salvation of God ! 

LVIII. 

But there is one thought that continually obtrudes itself on 
our waking senses at night — God is a Spirit. It is an idea that 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 15 

is too seldom before us as a subject for meditation. It is one of 
those sublime truths that, with all their meaning, flash suddenly 
upon our intellects, and bewilder them. The fact is, we seldom 
see truths in their entirety. Each has as many facets as a crys- 
tal ; and now we see one ; now, another. There are some truths 
whose farthest side we never see, as we never see the far face of 
the moon. But we are so dazed and bewildered by sensible ob- 
jects that, daily and momentarily, strike our senses, that the idea 
of God as a Spiritual Essence or Being is unfamiliar to us. We 
always represent Him to the imagination as a human being — old, 
venerable, kind — yet a man, and therefore limited and imperfect. 
Now, this is not an adequate conception of God. But can we 
form an adequate conception ? No. But we may form a worthy 
conception, worthy of us, if not of Him ; and this we cannot do, 
unless we strive to understand those words of our Lord : God is 
a Spirit ! 

LIX. 

But how can we form an idea of a spirit ? Is not this impos- 
sible in our condition of being? It is not. We cannot paint a 
spirit, nor describe it, except in human terms. But we may con- 
ceive it, or at least those abstract qualities which we associate 
with it. The thought, for example, that we are surrounded by 
God, as a fish by the sea, as a bird by the air, that He is closer 
to us than breathing, nearer than hands or feet, conveys an idea 
of His omnipresence, which we could never understand if He were 
represented under a merely human form. Then the idea that He 
is a Spirit, endowed with subtlety, immensity, penetration, leads 
us to understand His omnipotence far better than a representa- 
tion of hands and feet ; and, lastly, when we combine with that 
idea the final perfection of goodness and love, we come to feel 
that in us, around us, above us, is that mysterious Entity, invisible, 
intangible, in whose embraces we float, in whose arms we rest, 
secure in the double conviction that here are the two faculties 
which assure our safety, here and hereafter — merciful omnipo- 
tence and all-powerful love. 



Il6 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LX. 

I do not find fault with painters and artists who strive to draw 
on canvas their conceptions of Deity. They cannot do better. 
They must rise above mere symbolic representations. The Eye in 
a Triangle, the Circle with wings of light, are very feeble embodi- 
ments of God. Nothing then is left but the representation of God 
as the Pater Aetermis, Creator coeli et terrae. But this corporeal 
representation excludes the idea of spirit, although otherwise 
meant. And they, who never lift their eyes beyond that symbol 
of paternity, and never try to see the spirituality of God, fail to 
surround their imaginations with the loftiest conceptions of that 
transcendent Being, who, in using human language to express 
His manifold perfections, could only say, I am who am. But it 
seems that there w r as at least some special significance in that 
saying of our Lord's: Dens est spiritus ; for the word spirit in 
Hebrew, Greek, and other languages signifies a gentle gale of 
wind ; and as this surrounds us, wraps us all around, penetrates 
us, soothes us, compels us, refreshes us, though we neither see it, 
nor know whence it has come, or whither goeth, so with that 
ineffable Being, in whom " we live, and move, and are." 



LXI. 

The sense of the presence of a guardian-Angel — a dear, familiar 
spirit, exiled for a while from the blisses of Heaven, to be the com- 
panion of our mortal pilgrimage, is very soothing and strengthen- 
ing. One comes to love that unseen being, ever at our side, 
watchful, zealous, merciful, loving, protecting. But it is its very 
unseenness that makes us love it; and also the sense of our 
dependence. For if the sense of protection is the secret of 
maternal and other perfect, unselfish love, on the other hand the 
feeling of weakness and dependence constitutes filial afTection. 
But, let us expand even to infinity the attributes of our Angel ; 
let us see him as a speck in a sea of light ; let us know that he, 
too, is dependent on the Supreme ; and then, let us add up, in the 
feeble arithmetic of reason, all that we know of fine spiritualities, 
their unearthliness, their purity, their unselfishness, their power, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 117 

their love, and then multiply this sum of all conceivable excellence 
by the vast ciphers of infinity ; and we shall have an idea of that 
transcendent Being, who filleth the deserts of the universe, and 
lightens their loneliness with His Infinite Beauty ; and in whose 
embraces we, the least ones of His intelligent creation, repose in 
security and peace, whilst He veils His splendors from us. 

"O? iravTa TrXrjpol, fcal ava> iravro^ fievec. 
"O? vovv <ro<f>i£eL, teal voov cfyevyei /3o\a?. 

Who filleth all things, yet abideth above all ; 

Who giveth wisdom to the mind, yet fleeth all scrutiny. 



LXII. 

And yet this will not do for all persons, at all times. The 
soul faints in contemplating God as a Spirit. It needs the visible, 
the tangible. Hence the Incarnation, if it were not necessary, 
would be inevitable. Hence, too, the absolute necessity of the 
Real Presence, if faith and love were to be preserved amongst 
men. The Israelites of old needed the perpetual monitions of 
God to keep alive their feeble, intermittent faith. Nay, with all 
the terrible reminders of His presence, how frequently and how 
foully they fell ! Under the very shadow of the clouded mountain, 
and with its thunders pealing above their heads, they fell into the 
basest idolatry. We cannot boast that we are of stronger fibre 
than they. How then could God substitute a Book for His 
Presence ? The New Law was to perfect the Old. If so, God 
must have come nearer to His people. The cloud vanished ; the 
pillar of fire disappeared ; the ark was destroyed. But where was 
God ? Nearer in His personal presence. Certainly. This was 
inevitable. If Jehovah vanished, it was to leave a closer and 
nearer substitute of His presence. But how? As a Spirit? No! 
This would have been as far from the craving sense of men as 
the God of the Deluge, or Sinai. How then could He come 
nearer to men, nearer to their senses, as well as to their faith ? 
Only in one way. Verbum Car o factum est ; et vidimus gloriam 
ejus, gloriam quasi Unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis. 



Il8 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LXIII. 

The New Law would be more imperfect than the Old, if God 
did not come closer to His people. But this could only be accom- 
plished by His visible presence. But there could be no visible 
presence of God, but as Man. God should therefore become Man 
to reveal Himself fully to the world. This He did in His Incar- 
nation. But again it was quite clear He could not remain forever 
visibly amongst us. On the other hand, a merely historical Christ 
would have left the work of union and revelation imperfect. A 
Book is no substitute for a Being, especially when that Being is 
God. To complete the whole scheme of Divine economy, there- 
fore, the presence of God should be maintained. Otherwise, the 
Christian would have been of less consequence than the Israelite, 
to whom Jehovah spoke and manifested His presence. But how 
could the presence of God become a lasting memorial of His 
love, and yet be veiled in such shadows and accidents that man 
should have perfect faith, yet be not " overwhelmed with glory " ? 
Only in one way — the only possible way consistent with the 
dignity of the Most-High — the way His Divine ingenuity dis- 
covered for the most stupendous mystery He has wrought — 
namely, the entombment of the ever living and eternal under the 
lowliest and most perishable of elements in the ineffable Sacra- 
ment of the Altar. 

LXIV. 

Carlyle, in his extreme old age, and when every vestige of 
faith or religious credence had left him, admitted to his bio- 
grapher, Froude, that the Mass was the only relic of religious 
faith now left in the world. It was a curious and even valuable 
admission. He had no love for Catholicity. The old spirit of 
Calvinism, in which he had been reared, survived under the dark 
gloomy philosophy he had tried to place in its stead ; and there is 
no heresy so antagonistic to the brightness and beauty of Catholic 
Doctrine as Calvinism. But the old sage had read and thought 
and seen much ; and even in the pale light of history, he had 
observed the great fact, that the sacrifice of the Upper- Room in 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 119 

Jerusalem, and of Calvary, the sacrifice of the Catacombs and the 
Deserts, was perpetuated through all the succeeding ages of the 
Church's history; and was now, what it always has been, the great 
fact in the ever varying history of mankind. And so, too, if ever 
the day should come when civil holidays will completely usurp 
the place of Saints' holidays, the world will hesitate, again and 
again, before it removes the great festival of " Christ's Mass " 
from the calendars of men. 

LXV. 

It comes as a sudden sun in the darkness of mid-winter. Its 
illumination, as of hope, stretches far back into the gloom of No- 
vember ; and far forward, as a memory, into the cold and storms 
of January. Weary men look to it as a time of armistice or truce, 
when they may forget they are enemies, and believe they are friends 
and brothers. For, alas ! that it should be true, all men accept 
the verdict of the stricken Job, and believe that life is a warfare ; 
and most men think themselves Ishmaelites, with the hands of 
the rest of mankind against them. They do not like it — this 
struggle for the survival of the fittest. It is hard, scientific, brutal. 
But so they are taught ; and so they learn all too aptly. They 
would fain unlace their helmets, and unbuckle their armor, and 
unloose their greaves ; and lie down by the common stream to 
drink and repose, before taking up their weapons again. Well, 
Christmas is just such a time. The little Child suddenly appears; 
and contention is hushed. Humanity asserts itself in Him who 
assumed it, and all the belligerents bow down. Courtesies are 
interchanged ; the finer feelings come uppermost ; men grasp one 
another's hands in friendship. They think of the fallen — the 
dead. They touch the fingers of those who are far off. They 
allow a tear to gather and fall. It is well ! Soon must they take 
up the weapons and go forth ; and steel their hearts against the 
finer thoughts, that still remain to humanize them. 

LXVI. 

If I mistake not, some such instance of sudden pause and human 
awakening occurred in the Civil War. Two detachments of Union 



120 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

and Confederate troops had been watching each other for days 
seeking the hour for the successful destruction of the enemy. 
At last they came into touch with each other. The scouts an- 
nounced their proximity. There was a river with a bridge between 
them ; and the great objective on either side was the capture and 
retention of that bridge. Both pushed forward, reconnoitered, 
charged. Just as they gained the entrance on either side, the 
foremost troopers checked their horses, and pressed back their 
comrades to a sudden halt. For right in their track, on the 
roadway, was a child of two summers. It was playing with 
flowers, with all the delightful innocence and unconsciousness of 
childhood. It knew nothing of its peril. " It feared no danger, 
for it knew no sin." Then it saw the advancing troopers, who had 
slowed down to a walk. Its eye caught their splendid uniforms, 
and the trappings of their horses, and it smiled. The foremost dra- 
goon leaned down, and picking up the waif, placed it on the pom- 
mel of his saddle. Friends and enemies gathered around, and 
sought its smiles. It was a pause of pity in the game of destruc- 
tion. Men wondered at one another, and grew ashamed, and 
smiled. Gloved hands met, and scabbard made music with scab- 
bard. Then they parted, and went their several ways once more. 
It was Christmas, and the Christ ! 

LXVII. 

Where do the words occur: La vie est un combat; pas un 
hymne. Yes ! but is this the design of the Creator ; or rather the 
result of man's own perversity ? But, admitting that life must be 
a warfare, why should not a hymn mingle with the clash of arms, 
and even drown it ? Not a hymn over the fallen — a hymn of 
triumph over defeat and death ; but a hymn of praise to the Lord 
of Battles for the peace His wisdom hath imparted to ourselves. 
And is not this duty of praise, this obligation of worship, and 
stealing the " Sanctus " from the lips of Archangels, the one duty 
which we, through false humility, or selfishness, neglect ? We pour 
out our painful Misereres in the ear of Heaven. Why should not 
an exultant Magnificat occasionally rise above them, if it were 
only to prove to Heaven that we are not altogether mendicants, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 121 

but mindful of our eternal destiny to take our places on the thrones 
vacated by the spirits who forgot their obligations of praise in the 
paroxysms of pride ? What is the hymnology of the Church for, 
if it be not to put the canticles of joy and praise upon our lips ? 
Let us have our days of weeping and our places of mourning, if 
you like, as the Jews down there in the Valley of Hinnom, with 
their faces against the foundations of the temple that shall never 
be rebuilt. But let us also remember that we are Christians; 
that the Alleluias of Resurrection are ours ; and that the wisest 
of Christian philosphers has bidden us : Gaudete y gaudete semper ; 
iterum dico y gaudete ! And that a greater than St. Paul hath said : 
" Can the children of the bridegroom mourn as long as the Bride- 
groom is with them ? " And He is with us, so long as the eter- 
nal Sacrifice shall be offered — our Emmanuel, God with us, for 
ever! 

LXVIII. 

We had a frost, a killing frost, last night. It came to beautify, 
and to destroy. It was a dread Apollyon under a virginal and 
beautiful disguise. A light snow sifted down from the gray sky 
in the late twilight ; and , the frost came and hardened it on the 
trees, until the leafless branches took on a perfect white plumage, 
and a great silence wrapped all the earth. The evergreens were 
more heavily coated than the trees whose foliage was deciduous, 
but these latter, where the snow fell thinner, and whose branches 
were thickly interlaced, looked very beautiful, although one felt 
that the loveliness was delicate and frail. One particular spot in 
my garden was a perfect marvel of beauty, so faint and fragile 
was the exquisite tracery on branches and tiny leaves. The sun 
came out, gave a new radiance to the landscape, and then dis- 
solved the whole picture into weeping and wintry death again. 
And I marvelled at the magic of the frost, and all that it could 
do with that simple element of water, until my foot struck a dead 
thrush lying on the gravelled path. I took it up. It was frozen 
hard as a stone — all its spring-music hushed for ever and de- 
stroyed. The same secret force that had created beauty, had 
annihilated it. I went into my greenhouse. All the plants that 



122 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

we had housed carefully for the May-time, were wilted and with- 
ered. The magician of the frost and snow was the Apollyon of 
flower and bird. 

LXIX. 

What a singular coincidence it was that Johnson should have 
engraved on the dial-plate of his watch, and Sir Walter Scott on 
the sun-dial in his garden the self-same words : vv% <ydp epxerai ! 
For the night cometh ! The former was constitutionally indolent; 
but his conscience was forever protesting against it. The latter 
was seized with a passion for work, especially in the latter part of 
his life, within which he concentrated as much labor as was pos- 
sible without straining the mind to the breaking-point. But this 
idea of work, as identical with life, seems to have seized on all 
great thinkers. It is their solution of the problem of the universe 
— the one way of disentangling the threads of the mighty prob- 
lem, jy snis ! And whatever my hands find to do, I shall do it 
with all my might. " The night cometh ! " So said the great 
Divine Teacher. Let me hasten, then. It is no time for idle 
dreaming. Swiftly the little circle rounds to its close. To-day is 
mine ; to-morrow is doubtful. Very soon I shall no longer be 
above the earth, but beneath it. Here, then, hand, eye, brain, 
lend your help ! I need to leave behind me some record of my 
being. Non omnis mortar/ There is a double sense in the 
words. I shall pass to a new existence, but shall remain on earth 
immortalized by my work. Its beneficent influences shall pass down 
the long valleys of the years, make sweet the bitter and fertile 
the barren, until men whose faces I shall never see shall bless the 
dead hand that grasps theirs from the grave ! So think these 
great masters of thought. It is a noble ambition ! 

LXX. 

Yes, work and worship. These be the watchwords of that 
night which we call day. They are certainties, not merely possi- 
bilities — the certainties of that great monitor and task-master, 
Duty. Speculations are only useful inasmuch as they lead on to 
work and worship. Mere conjectures about the mystery of being 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 23 

would be fruitless and profitless, if they ended with themselves in 
a ceaseless, unending round of difficulties propounded, only to be 
postponed. But the highest speculations resolve themselves, 
sooner or later, into the conclusion that, out of all uncertainties 
and possibilities, one thing alone remains positive and well- 
defined, and that is that our primal obligations whilst we remain 
on this planet are worship of the Invisible and Uncreated, and 
work of some kind in the elements that go to make up life. For 
we, too, have a kind of creative or conserving force within us. 
And we have to evolve order and beauty out of our surroundings 
— the brown earth, the barren sea, the souls of men ; or we have 
to help in keeping intact such work as the progressive centuries 
have wrought for mankind, and to keep earth, and sea, and 
human lives from reverting to primitive chaos. 

LXXI. 

That great line of Hesiod's : 

"ILpya veoov, (3ov\ai re fieo-cov, evyai re yepovroov, 

is generally translated : 

In the morning of life, work ; 

In the meridian of life, give counsel ; 

In the evening of life, pray. 

Not bad for a pagan. Yet would it not be better to say, pray 
in youth; work in middle life; give counsel in old age. For, 
surely, youth needs prayer for enlightenment and strength, and 
distrust of self, and holy fear. And it is in manhood, we work 
best, physically and intellectually ; for our energies do not reach 
their perfection till then, the wheels of life moving faster as we 
go down the hill of time towards eternity. And it is the tradi- 
tion of mankind, that wisdom comes with age ; for if the cunning 
of Ulysses is lost, the experience of Nestor supervenes; . and 
grey-beard wisdom has a mellowness that no ability, or study, 
or talent can give. The oil that flows down the beard of Aaron 
is holy, — holy with the balsam of experience, and consecrated by 
the years that have brought in their train the consecration of the 
Most High. 



124 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LXXII. 
When one has come to relish the sweetness and the strength 

o 

of every word spoken by our Divine Lord to His disciples or the 
multitude, there is a holy impatience with the Evangelists for not 
having given the world more of that Divine wisdom. I have said 
when one has come to realize the sweetness and strength of the 
language of the Divine Teacher, because it needs experience, and 
thought, and comparison, to understand how true was that ex- 
pression of the wondering crowd : " Never man spake like to this 
man ! " I should say, not. All human teaching in Dialogue, 
Enchiridia, Discourses, Pensees, Maxims, etc., sinks into ragged 
and beggarly insignificance before the wisdom of the Word. 
There can be nothing more foolish and banal, not to say, blas- 
phemous, than to compare the teaching of any philosopher with 
the teaching of Christ. And hence, there is no verse in all the 
Holy Scriptures so tantalizing to the followers of Christ as that 
last verse of the Gospel of St. John : " But there are also many 
other things which Jesus did, which, if they were written every 
one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the 
books that should be written." The Apostle might have added, 
"did and said"; for we know we have not a tithe of the sweet 
and beautiful discourses of our Lord. The recorded words are 
fragments, analecta, of long sermons in the Temple, by the sacred 
sea, on the mountains, by the wayside. Take the Sermon on the 
Mount. Do we not know that our Lord must have spoken long 
and earnestly before He summed up all in the deathless Beati- 
tudes ? And the discourse at the Last Supper — well, no ! it 
would be hard to add anything to that ! But, it is certain that 
all that our Lord said in Nazareth and Judaea has not come down 
to us. Silence has fallen for ever on these sacred conferences ; 
and no man now can reveal them ! 



LXXIII. 

Yet what would we not give for just a little more ? What did 
He say when Lazarus went back to his sisters at Bethany, and all 
the wealth of love in that humble home was poured at His feet ? 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 12$ 

What were the unspeakable confidences to His Mother at Naz- 
areth, before He went out on His mighty mission ? In what lan- 
guage did He pray to His Eternal Father from the solitude of the 
mountains and under the eternal stars ? Would we not give up 
all the Socratic disputations for a tithe of these things that are 
now hidden from us ? And Marcus Aurelius ? And Seneca ? 
Yes, and more ! We would sacrifice Shakspere and Milton and 
Dante ; and in these all merely human wisdom is enshrined — nay, 
we would make a holocaust of all the national literatures of the 
world, if the lips of the Evangelists could be unsealed, and if we 
could get ever so little of a deeper insight into the unspeakable 
and, alas ! unrevealed depths of the Soul of Christ ! 

LXXIV. 

George Eliot, in the first fervor of her apostasy from the 
Christian faith, wrote thus to a friend : 

I have many thoughts, especially on a subject I should like to work 
out : The superiority of the consolations of philosophy to those of 
(so-called) religion. Do you stare ? 

She did not carry out her pious design. She was young then, 
only thirty. Perhaps as the years went by, and experience took 
the spurs from enthusiasm, she thought better of it. Or perhaps, 
wider reading than Strauss, or larger views than she found in the 
kiln-dried ethics of Spinoza, may have modified her views of phil- 
osophy as an active factor in life. Or, perhaps, under trial, she 
may have found philosophy a broken reed. Like so many more, 
who in the intensity of human pride believe in Stoicism, she may 
have found it wanting. " Sufficis tibi," sounds well ; but music 
will not heal the wounds of the soul. " Sufficit tibi gratia mea," 
sounds equally well ; and is the sovereign salve for broken or 
despairing humanity. 

LXXV. 

There is a large, and ever-increasing class of people in these 
querulous and inquisitive times, who are forever demanding 
perfection everywhere, except in themselves. One of these came 



126 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

into my garden yesterday. I take a little pride in my spring- 
flowers ; and I expected to hear several notes of admiration. No. 
He was in the interrogatory mood. " Why haven't you freesias? 
A garden is nothing without them. And the new American 
fuchsia is lovely. I hate these crocuses. They are vulgar things. 
How are your vines coming on ? None ! Do you mean to say 
you have no vines ? Everyone now has vines. Tis a great mis- 
take to pay four shillings a pound for grapes, when you can grow 
them yourself so easily." " Well," I replied, " I admit there is 
room for improvement. And a man should be grateful for such 
gratuitous advice as he gets from time to time. None of us is 
perfect. We are only aiming at perfection. In the near future, 
perhaps, when people will buy books, instead of borrowing them ; 
and when this universal mendicancy into which our country has 
fallen (for if I am to judge by my daily post, we are in a state of 
hopeless insolvency and bankruptcy), has yielded to more hope- 
ful or perhaps more honest conditions, I may be able to realize 
your ideals. And then I shall extend the field of my operations; 
and ask your permission to cultivate that half-acre of yours which 
now is growing a luxurious crop of dockweed and thistles." 

LXXVI. 

I would not mention in these philosophic pages such a trifling 
passage of arms, but for that remark about my crocuses. Now, I 
rather like that little crocus. It comes to you, just after the 
snowdrops, when all other more gaudy things are hiding beneath 
the hard earth ; and they put up, and flaunt the little bit of color 
which God has given them, and just at the time when we want it 
most sadly. I cannot help feeling grateful to them ; but after 
that remark of my friend's, I must confess, I began to look 
askance at them. Vulgar? Well, I suppose they are. And 
then came a curious association of ideas. That word of contempt 
took me back in one flash of memory to a scene I had once wit- 
nessed, more than a quarter of a century before, in Dartmoor 
prison. I was in the prison sacristy, vested for Mass. The bell 
had rung ; and the convicts were defiling past the sacristy door 
into their places in the chapel. All had assembled ; and my con- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 12? 

vict acolyte had opened the door of the sacristy, when the clank 
of chains smote upon me, and twelve or thirteen prisoners, 
chained wrist to ankle, passed rapidly by the door. They were 
clad in yellow, a bright but dirty yellow. They were the dan- 
gerous prisoners, who had attempted escape, or committed some 
fresh crime in prison. 

LXXVII. 

There was something inexpressibly hideous about that yellow 
convict garb. I had seen prisoners clad in parti-colored yellow 
and brown, carefully mixed, half and half. It was only ludicrous. 
This complete yellow garb was frightful. Then and there I con- 
ceived a violent aversion to that color. I discovered that it was 
also the emblem of disease. The quarantine flag is yellow. I 
discovered other abominations in connection with it. I wrote it 
down as the outcast amongst colors, the symbol of all physical 
and moral degeneracy. I found then that it was the Imperial 
color in China. This only increased my aversion. Then one day 
a friend (such a friend is never long wanting) reminded me that 
yellow was also the "Turner" color; and furthermore, that it 
was the national color of the Irish, taken from their sunburst. 
Nay, that up to a very recent period in their histoiy, the Irish 
invariably dyed their outer garment, a short, winged cloak, in 
saffron! My discomfiture was complete. I tried to bluff him. I 
maintained that green was our national color; and, in Pagan 
times, dark blue. He reminded me that within a stone's throw of 
this village is Saffron Hill, and that old men still remember the 
acres of yellow crocuses grown there to dye the cloaks of our 
ancestors. 

LXXVIII. 

I began to believe then that yellow was unquestionably 
respectable, when that sudden, contemptuous remark sent me 
back to Dartmoor again ; and the old, sickening feeling of fear 
and repulsion rose spectre- wise from the vault of memory. What 
creatures we are ; and what slaves of our senses ! I never knew 
a man who could picture to his imagination the whole of a ship 



128 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

at sea. In the dry dock it is easy enough. You see the entire 
hull, even to where it tapers away at the bottom ; you see the 
sharp edge, which, like the coulter of a plough, cuts the resisting 
waters ; you see the great, fin-like screw at the stern. But you 
see none of these things at sea. You see but the stately half-hull 
resting on the waves; and no more. And you cannot even 
imagine the rest. Try ! And your fancy comes back at once to 
what your senses testify, and no more. So, in dealing with Nature. 
We shudder with horror at the sensation of some harmless little 
thing creeping on our neck, or hand. We ruthlessly destroy it. 
We say it is hideous. Our sense of sight testifies that that beetle, 
or earwig, is a monster of ugliness ; and we instantly destroy it. 
What is all this ? The knowledge of the senses ? No ! The 
ignorance, crass and stupid of the senses. Look closer ! Here, 
take this glass, and behold what a miracle of Omniscience you 
have trampled out of existence. 

LXXIX. 

" Now, now, now," I hear some one say, " this is absurd. 
Everyone knows you are credulous enough to believe a circus- 
poster ; and sentimental enough to find poetry in an earth-worm." 
I admit the soft impeachment. I do not believe that under the 
bell-tent of the circus you or I shall see all that appeared on th6 
gaudy poster ; but is it an exaggeration to the wondering eyes of 
childhood ? Do not the children believe it all ; and think the 
poster a wretched presentment of all the glories and Arabian 
Nights' splendors beneath the canvas ? If I do not believe, so 
much the worse for me. I have become critical and analytical — 
the worst mental condition into which a human being can fall. But 
who will declare the poster to be exaggerated and untrue, when 
the children believe it all, even after their experience of the reality. 
It only proves the relativity of knowledge. But about that earth- 
worm ! And poetry ? How can you combine them ? Well, 
genius can do everything. Did not Tennyson make poetry out 
of a veal-pasty in " The Princess " ? And if I disinter a now- 
forgotten poem from a forgotten poet, who once was so famous 
that his enthusiastic fellow-countrymen buried his masterpiece 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 29 

with him, I shall not be blamed ; and there is one great picture 
where the despised earth-worm caps the climax of intensity. 



LXXX. 

I hear some witling say, " Buried his masterpiece with him." 
A rather doubtful compliment, liest-ce pas ? No ! It was a 
genuine compliment, such as his countrymen invariably pay to 
their immortals. The masterpiece was " The Messiah " ; the 
poet was Klopstock ; the race was German ; the lines ran thus : 

Earth grew still at the sinking twilight ; the twilight 
Gloomier ; stiller the earth. Broad ghastly shadows, with pale gleams 
Streaked more dimly and more, flowed troublous over the mountains. 
Dumb withdrew the fowls of heaven to the depths of the forest ; 
Beasts of the field stole fearful to hide in the loneliest caverns. 
Even the worm slunk down. In the air reigned deathlike silence. 

I may be wrong, but I think that is a stroke of genius. Our 
generation has gone into ecstasies over Tennyson's minute obser- 
vation of Nature and natural objects. The color of the ashbuds 
in the month of March, the slanting way in which a lark sinks 
down on his nest, the lone heron on the windy mere, the creeping 
of a wave along the halls of a sea-cave — all have been noticed, 
and all have been admired. But that line about the earth-worm 
hiding itself in the convulsions of Nature under the horrors of the 
Crucifixion has haunted me from the day I read it, many years 
ago, in Taylor's " Survey of German Poetry." 

LXXXI. 

Klopstock, I believe, has long since gone out of fashion even 
in his native Germany. And Carlyle, for us, has long since de- 
throned him ; and enthroned his own godkin, Goethe, in his place. 
I confess I cannot whip my mind into a ferment of enthusiasm 
about Goethe; just as I cannot bend the knee to Burns, or other 
Philistine deity. I have conscientiously tried, and failed. I have 
read through " Elective Affinities," and " Wilhelm Meister's 
Apprenticeship," and the rest. It was weary work, lightened only 



ISO UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

by the Ariel-presence and ever-to-be-remembered song of Mig- 
non. The world will ever be grateful to Goethe for that. It is a 
breath of spring air amid mephitic vapors — the carol of a bird, 
suddenly heard on an artificial, gas-lighted, meretricious stage. In- 
deed, Goethe's masterpieces are his lyrics. The Mason-song, made 
familiar by Carlyle's translation ; and the song of the Parcae in 
Iphigenia are likely to endure. But I have a shrewd suspicion 
that the good court-ladies who crowned him with laurel-wreaths 
in his old age, and after the performance of that same drama, had 
in mind his wonderful masculine beauty, as well as the splendors 
of his genius. And I also think " Faust " has captivated the world 
not for its philosophy, which is jejune enough, nor for its morality, 
which is invisible ; nor for its art, which is weak in the opening 
scenes of the First Part, and in every scene of the Second ; but 
for its tender tale of human love and sorrow. 

LXXXII. 

For just the opposite reason, Schiller never reached the popu- 
larity of his friend and rival. What deceptive things portraits, 
especially photographs, are ! For more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury, I have had a photograph of Schiller in my album ; and I 
had formed the idea of a poetic face and form, more than Byronic 
in its beauty. The firm set of the features, clear-cut and Grecian 
in their outline, the long hair streaming in ringlets on the 
shoulders, the bold, flashing eye, and the proud, curved lip, gave 
one the idea of a self-reliant, world-despising intellectual giant. 
Alas ! life is all a disillusion ! I read in later life the following, 
and was most reluctantly undeceived : 

' ' In his bedroom we saw his skull for the first time, and were 
amazed at the smallness of the intellectual region. There is an in- 
tensely interesting sketch of Schiller lying dead, which I saw for the 
first time in the study ; but all pleasure in thinking of Schiller's por- 
traits and bust is now destroyed to me by the conviction of their 
untruthfulness. Rauch told us he had a miserabele Stwne. Waagen 
says that Tieck, the sculptor, told him there was something in Schiller's 
whole person that reminded him of a camel r . " 3 

3 Life of George Eliot. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 131 

No enthusiasm, certainly no feminine enthusiasm, would be 
proof against this ! And when you add to this, that he had a 
Gansehals (goose-neck), the disillusion is complete. 



LXXXIII. 

It is strange how great minds invariably turn, by some instinct 
or attraction, towards this eternal miracle — the Church. Carlyle 
admits in his extreme old age that the Mass is the most genuine 
relic of religious belief left in the world. Goethe was for ever 
introducing the Church into his conversations, coupling it with the 
idea of power, massive strength, and ubiquitous influence. Byron 
would insist that his daughter, Allegra, should be educated in a 
convent, and brought up a Catholic, and nothing else. And Rus- 
kin, although he did say some bitter things about us, tells us what 
a strong leaning he has towards monks and monasteries ; how he 
pensively shivered with Augustinians at St. Bernard ; happily 
made hay with Franciscans at Fiesole ; sat silent with the Carthu- 
sians in their little gardens south of Florence ; and mourned 
through many a day-dream at Bolton and Melrose. Then he 
closes his little litany of sympathy with the quaintly Protestant 
conclusion : But the wonder is always to me, not how much, but 
how little, the monks have on the whole done, with all that leisure, 
and all that goodwill. 

LXXXIV. 

He cannot understand ! That is all. But why ? Because 
he cannot search the archives of Heaven. He knows nothing of 
the supernatural — of the invisible work of prayer — of work that 
is worship. He has never seen the ten thousand thousand words 
of praise that have ascended to the Most High ; and the soft dews 
of graces innumerable that have come down from Heaven in an- 
swer to prayer. He has painted, as no one else, except perhaps Car- 
lyle could, the abominations of modern life ; and he has flung all 
the strength of his righteous anger against them. He has never 
asked himself why God is so patient, whilst John Ruskin rages ; 
or why fire and brimstone are not showered from Heaven, as 
whilom on the Cities of the Plain. He had read his Bible, year 



132 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

by year, hard words, Levitical laws, comminatory Psalms, from 
ev apxo to Amen ; and, what is more rare, he believed in it. Yet 
he never tried to fathom the mystery of the unequal dealings of 
God with mankind. He never saw the anger of the Most 
High soothed, and His Hand stayed by the midnight prayer and 
scourge of the Trappist and the Carthusian. Dante could never 
have written the Paradiso, if he had not heard Cistercians chant- 
ing at midnight ! 

LXXXV. 

So, too, he failed to understand how a mountain-monk would 
positively refuse to go into raptures about crags and peaks ; and 
fix his thoughts on eternity. " I didn't come here to look at 
mountains," was the abrupt answer of the stern monk to the 
nineteenth century aesthete. What then? You must think of 
something, my shaven friend, or go mad. " I thought of the 
ancient days ; I had in mind the eternal years," was the reply. 
Veiy profitless employment, certainly, to the eyes of modern 
wisdom, which believes that " work is worship " ; but that wor- 
ship is not work. How can it be, when you see no visible results 
— no piling up of shekels, nor hoisting of sky-scrapers, no hog- 
gish slaughter-houses, nor swinish troughs ; only psalms that die 
out in the midnight darkness, and silent prayer from lonely cell 
away on that snow-clad mountain summit ? 



LXXXVI. 

I notice that this is the one feature in Catholicity which the 
Protestant mind can never understand. It appreciates cordially 
the Catholic work of rescue — the rescue of the waif from the 
street, of the Magdalen from the gaol or river, of the drunkard 
from the bottle, of the gambler from the table, of the orphan 
from destitution and vice. And so it will tolerate, but only 
tolerate, educational or charitable institutions or communities — 
what we call the Active Orders. But the Contemplative Orders 
it cannot understand. Why a number of monks and nuns should 
be shut up in cloistered seclusion, cut away from all sympathy 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. J 33 

with human life and endeavor, apparently unproductive and use- 
less factors in the great giant march of progress, is unintelligible. 
Of course, it is ! Because God is unintelligible, or rather ignored. 
Because all modern religion, outside the Church, develops itself 
into humanitarianism — that is, positivism — that is, atheism in its 
crudest and most naked aspect. 



LXXXVII. 

In fact, all controversy between the Church and the world is 
rapidly resolving itself into this : Is God to be placed in the fore- 
ground of His universe; or is man? The Church strenuously 
affirms the former ; the world, the latter. The Church says, God 
is everything ; man, nothing, except in God. God, the centre to 
which all things tend, and from which all things radiate ; man, 
not the apex of creation by any means, only a unit in creation, 
made sublime by his aspirations, his hopes, his sufferings, and his 
destiny. A generation that has lost all faith in Thirty-nine Ar- 
ticles or other formulary, seeks vainly for something that will 
take the place of vanished beliefs. The next thing to hand is 
humanity — man, the little god of this planet. Agnoscimus ! we 
know no more ! And the Eternal Church keeps tolling its bell 
through the world ; and the burden of its persistent calling is the 
monotone of Time, echoed from Eternity : God, and God, and 
God! 

LXXXVIII. 

George Eliot, too, that fine mind, darkened, alas ! so early to 
all that was really sublime, had a curious sympathy with Catholic 
faith and worship. She bitterly laments the fact that Niirnberg 
has become Protestant; and that it had but one Catholic church, 
where one could go in and out as one would. She goes into the 
Protestant St. Sebald's, where a clergyman was reading in a cold, 
formal way under the grand, Gothic arches. Then she enters 
the Catholic Frauen-Kirche, where the organ and voices were 
pealing forth a glorious Mass. " How I loved the good people 
around me, as we stood with a feeling of brotherhood amongst 



134 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

the standing congregation till the last notes of the organ had 
died out." And at her first glance at the Sistine Madonna, as 
she sat on the sofa, opposite that miracle of art, a " sort of awe, 
as if I were suddenly in the living presence of some glorious 
being, made my heart swell too much for me to remain com- 
fortably, and we hurried out of the room." Probably, the finest 
testimony ever given by a subtle and refined temperament to the 
magic of art ! One could forgive a good deal to that spontaneous 
act of veneration. 

LXXXIX. 

By the way, what a singular chapter in the history of literature 
is her life and works and destiny. Even during her lifetime she 
had as many commentators as Shakspere. Her peculiarly mas- 
culine intellect, which took up and discussed with ease, begotten 
of conscious mastery of the subject, problems in human life 
which might have puzzled Plato, had apparently fascinated modern 
thought, and made her the idol of a generation which prides itself 
upon being, above all things, intellectual. It would be a marvel, 
indeed, if in all the hero-worship of which she was the object, there 
were not a fair amount of extravagance. It is easy enough to 
exaggerate the merits of a writer, who has excited our wonder by 
powers of observation — shall we say, creation ? — that were unique. 
And there was a very strong temptation to see ever beyond the 
vision of the writer, and to conjecture deep suggestion and lofty 
wisdom beneath apparently simple elements. Goethe's " Faust " 
is supposed to be a revelation of mysteries, hitherto unguessed, 
and which the initiated only can read. I have heard it styled 
" The Bible of Freemasonry." Tennyson's Idylls are supposed 
to be essentially allegorical, the meaning of the allegory being 
sealed, notwithstanding his own revelations, until some generation 
shall arise, more mature in its wisdom than ours. And George Eliot 
is supposed to have given us not only a system of philosophy, but 
even a religion in her writings, the key of which lies with the 
future ; and then — the millennium ! 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 135 

xc. 

The truth appears to be that she was a woman of singular natu- 
ral gifts, and with a taste for subjects and studies which belong tra- 
ditionally to the masculine mind. In fact, she stands alone among 
her sex for her brilliant enterprises in the highest sphere of philo- 
sophic thought, her marvellous knowledge of the human heart 
and its workings, and a power of analyzing human thoughts and 
feelings, which is unique in modern literature. In the golden age 
of French literature, many brilliant women thronged the salons of 
Paris, — great wits, great conversationalists, and amateurs in the 
sceptical philosophy, which was just then becoming fashionable. 
But none of them essayed to be what George Eliot has become. 
She towers above the de Staels and Sevignes, as Shakspere above 
a troubadour. 

XCI. 

Altogether, she is, perhaps, the most remarkable figure in 
modern literature. Her life was very tranquil ; yet she paints 
very passionate scenes. She passed through few of the vicissi- 
tudes which make life tragic for the sufferer; yet she realizes 
them as clearly as Jane Welsh Carlyle. The world has long been 
wondering how Charlotte Bronte, a simple country girl, brought up 
in the seclusion of a Yorkshire parsonage, could have even con- 
ceived such a character as Rochester. But much more surprising 
is the fact that Marian Evans, reared in the quiet monotony of a 
country life, could by sheer powers of fancy, and without having 
seen a single type of her creations among men and women (if we 
except her clerical characters) could create such opposite charac- 
ters as Silas Marner and Tito ; or such types of religious enthu- 
siasm as Savonarola and Dinah Morris. 



XCII. 

And she writes without apparently one bit of sympathy with 
her creations. There is a tone through all her works as of one 
who looks upon the eccentricities of humanity with the pitying con- 



136 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

tempt of a being far removed above them. It is as if "Pallas had 
come down to earth, and framed out of her wisdom these strange 
puppets of humanity, and paraded them before us, and said: 
" Behold ! These be types of women and men ; mark how they 
speak and act ! I will tell you every motion that stirs them ; every 
passion that excites them ; I will lay bare their minds and hearts ; 
and perhaps you will see some things which you yourself have 
experienced." 

XCIII. 

It is absolutety certain, however, that this rare genius did retain 
to the end of life all her religious instincts and sympathy, although, 
alas ! she broke away from all religious beliefs. She loathed her 
task of translating the Lcben Jesu of Strauss ; and loathed still more 
the asperity and bitterness of the author. Could anything be 
more significant and pathetic than her confession, that she could 
only find strength and resolution to write the story of the Cruci- 
*fixion by gazing on a figure of the Crucified that surmounted her 
desk ? Could anything be more admonitory than her old-age 
admission that the basis of all happiness consists in possessing 
definite religious beliefs? Could anything be more reassuring 
than her attachment to the Bible (although Lewes repudiated it with 
scorn) to the end ; and the fact that the Imitation of Christ lay 
upon her bed when she was dying ? and that these two books, the 
inspired and the semi-inspired, with that Commedia that all men 
have agreed to call divine, were the constant companions of her 
senility and illness? Could anything be more terrible to the 
votaries of humanitarianism than her confession to her friend, 
as they passed up and down Addison's walk at Oxford : " I see no 
hope for humanity, but one grand, simultaneous act of suicide " ? 



XCIV. 

It is strange, too, how the old Greek idea of Fate, under the 
form of a Nemesis, or Retribution, not to be propitiated or averted, 
became a leading dogma of her life. It is the leading idea in 
Spinoza's Ethics ; Strauss accepted it ; Emerson formulated it 
thus: 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 137 

' ' The specific stripes may follow late upon the offence ; but they 
follow, because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out 
of one stem. We cannot do wrong, without suffering wrong." 

This doctrine might be controverted. It might be accepted as 
a kind of halting Christianity ; it might even do good to be so 
accepted and preached, always with the scholium — that crime is 
not unpardonable with God, if it is unforgivable by Nature and 
Society. But the curious thing is, that the most violent opponents 
of dogma are obliged to fall back upon dogma in the end ; and 
that Naturalism would find it difficult to explain the secret power 
that makes for Retribution, whilst it denies the Higher Intelligence 
that can punish or pardon according to Its own supreme decrees. 



xcv. 

Probably, this was the reason why George Eliot adopted as a 
practical maxim of life that Comtist doctrine : Notre vraie destinee 
se compose de resignation et d* activite . Work, work, work. Work 
blindly, but unceasingly. You will blunder ; nay, you will crimi- 
nate yourself. And behind you is Nemesis with her whip of 
scorpions. You cannot escape the lash. You are the galley-slave, 
with the cannon-ball tied to your ankle, and the warder over you 
with whip or musket, and the oar in your bleeding hands. What 
then ? Well, then, you must be resigned. There is no mending 
matters. It is Fate. There is one hope — the grave. Tears and 
prayers and penance are unavailing. The Fates are inexorable. 
They cannot be moved aside. There is no repentance ; only 
Retribution. So says Nature in her every tone. And we are 
Nature's children. We cannot say Our Father, for we have none. 
Let us take up our work, then, and go silently forward. And if 
the lash falls, let us yield to it, and swallow our tears with our 
bread. This is Life, and there is none other. 



XCVI. 

Did she suffer, I wonder, from the retribution she preached ? 
She violated the universal law in her pretended marriage with 



13^ UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

George Henry Lewes. What was the penalty? A certain 
biographer puts it — " the estrangement of friends, the loss of 
liberty of speech, the foremost rank amongst the women of her 
country, and a tomb in Westminster Abbey." Did she feel all 
this ? Or was the pleasure of perfect domestic felicity and a 
happy fireside a compensation ? We cannot think so. A note of 
depression runs through all the records of her married life. She 
seems to be always deprecating criticism; always watching the 
faces of her visitors. How poor a thing is philosophy, or logic, in 
face of a violated law ! How disgusting the very apologies that 
men make for the emancipation of passion from law ! Her great 
author, Feuerbach, asserted that enjoyment is a duty; and that 
it was the merest affectation to turn away from immodest or inde- 
cent scenes. Strauss sneered at the text which laid down the 
law of Christian chastity. Rousseau praised Sophie for her sin. 
Are not these grave and reverend personages, whose authority is 
all-sufficing ? Alas, no ! Society is inexorable ; Nature is arbi- 
trary, and conscience imperative. There is no escaping the 
Nemesis of Sin, except by Repentance. 

XCVII. 

The existence of evil in the world is a stumbling-block to 
many philosophers who cannot understand how inevitable in their 
own theories it is in a world of limitations and finite beings. The 
existence of pain is a still greater mystery to those who refuse to 
believe that it has its own wonderful secrets, which might well be 
purchased at even a dearer price. Pain, that purifies the victim, 
preaches to the strong, and evolves in victims and helpers virtues 
of which they were not even cognizant. For if it be true what a 
certain French cynic has said, that there is something in our 
worst misfortunes which does not altogether displease our nearest 
friends, let this be understood not in the sense that they rejoice in 
our misery, but in the sense of relief that they themselves have 
been spared so much pain. But for those who are closer and 
dearer, that seemingly selfish satisfaction does not obtain. Nay, 
they would gladly change places with us on our beds of pain, 
from which we preach to them the charity which they practise to 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 139 

us, and give even to the selfish the pleasure of immunity from 
the evils that afflict ourselves. 



XCVIII. 

George Elliot did not escape the common lot. She suffered ; 
but her suffering made her neither strong, nor interesting. It was 
the suffering of a well-to-do dyspeptic. One cannot sympathize 
well with this lady, whose drawing-room was turned into a cave of 
the Sybil, where she sat at the left-hand side of the fireplace, and 
awed visitors trod lightly on the soft carpet, as they were ushered 
into her presence, with a kind of admonitory reverence by her 
second husband and biographer. And if they thought at the 
same time of the enormous cheques that lay in her bureau 
from her publishers — ^"10,000 for one novel, £5 ,000 for another, 
and so on — somehow it must have mitigated their apprehensions, 
diluted her philosophy, and dulled their heroine-worship. And 
yet, perhaps, this is wrong. Nothing succeeds like success ; and 
there is no success, to some minds, if the final chaplet does not 
fall from the hands of Mammon. But this easy though busy life, 
unbroken by alternations of struggle and stress, is not what one 
expects from literary giants ; it is too epicurean and intellectual 
to be interesting. One misses the plaint : 

Ah ! who can tell how hard it is to climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? 



XCIX. 

I confess I am more interested in that painful, uphill struggle, 
which most literary men have to face, and of which Richter most 
probably speaks (for it was his own experience) when he says : 

" But often wilt thou shed thine own blood, that thou mayst the 
more firmly step down the path that leads to old age, even as chamois - 
hunters support themselves by the blood of their own heels. ' ' 

This suffering and struggle give strength and enlightenment. 
You cannot really understand life until you have tasted the sense 



140 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of camaraderie that comes from drinking out of the same bottle 
and sharing the same crust, — I was near saying, and occupy- 
ing the same branch, like that Bohemian who gave his town 
address as 

" Avenue de St. Cloud, third tree to the left after leaving the 
Bois de Boulogne, and fifth branch. ' ' 

Isn't that delightful ? And imagine those starving geniuses, — 
Balzac, Chenier, Murger, Karol, or some such like, bending over 
the ashes of their manuscripts which they had ignited to keep up 
a little heat, when the snow lay thick on Notre-Dame, and the 
mercury was some hundreds of degrees below zero ! 



All successful writers are unanimous in warning off young 
aspirants from the thorny path of literature. Grant Allen would 
give them a broom, and bid them take to crossing-sweeping; 
Gibbon, de Quincey, Scott, Southey, Lamb, Thackeray, — all 
showed the weals and lashes of the hard taskmaster ; amongst 
moderns, Daudet warns that brain-work is the most exacting of 
all species of labor, and must eventuate, sooner or later, in a bad 
break-down ; Mr. Zangwill says, somewhat grandiosely : " Whoso 
with blood and tears would dig art out of his soul, may lavish 
his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness ; or striking treasure, 
find only fairy gold, so that when his eye is purged of the spell 
of morning, he sees his hand is full of withered leaves." And 
dear old Sam Johnson, who certainly passed through his Inferno 
and Purgatorio before he settled down in the comfortable paradise 
at Streatham, epitomizes his hardships as author in the well-known 
line: 

Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol. 

CI. 

Nor can all these aspirants claim the steady nerve and calm 
philosophy of Jean Paul, who can see in poverty but " the pain 
of piercing a maiden's ears, that you may hang precious jewels in 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 141 

the wound." It is a bitter thing, a severe initiation into mysteries 
otherwise unintelligible ; and hence it is, I suppose, that with the 
eternal hope of youth, the ambitious see but the goal and the 
prize ; and like Alpine climbers, undismayed by the fate of others, 
and utterly oblivious of danger, they refuse to see crevasse or 
avalanche, or sliding glacier. They only see the peaks far away, 
shining like amber in the morning sun ; and they promise them- 
selves that, at evening, they shall stand on that summit where no 
foot of mortal had ever trodden before. It is somewhat melan- 
choly ; and yet it is the one thing that gives to the biographical 
part of literature that interest, amounting to sympathy, that is the 
right of the strong, who have fought their way through difficulties 
to success. 

CII. 

It would be well, however, that this sympathy took a prac- 
tical turn, especially where genius is concerned ; and I know no 
more touching instance of this inspiring hopefulness than the 
letters of his sister Laura to Balzac. She stood by him and en- 
couraged him,, when his parents turned him from the door as a 
fool, because he gave up the comfortable profession of notary, 
and took to the dry crusts and rags of literature ; she sympa- 
thized with all his struggles, rejoiced in all his triumphs; she 
advised him, controlled him, encouraged him ; and she stood by 
his bedside on that fatal day, August 18, 1850, when, after thirty 
hours of fearful agony, he died in the city that refused to recog- 
nize his talents till after death. A lurid, tempestuous, passionate 
life — misdirected and misapplied ! His biographer told the truth 
when he said that Paris was a hell, but a hell, the only place 
worth living in ; and of this he vowed to be a Dante. He suc- 
ceeded but too well ; and it would have been better for him and 
the world if he had left the secrets unrevealed. But, at least, 
Laura was his Beatrice. 



cm. 

Poor Henry Murger, too ! All that one can remember of 
him is his mother's intense devotion; his horrible disease, pur- 



142 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

pura, which he laughingly declared he wore with the dignity of 
a Roman Emperor ; his chivalric devotion to the Sister of Char- 
ity who nursed him in hospital — "A good Sister you were, the 
Beatrice of that hell. Your soothing consolations were so sweet, 
that we all complained whenever we had the chance, so as only 
to be consoled by you;" — his anticipation of O. W. Holmes' 
poem, " The Voiceless " : 

Nous avons cru pouvoir — nous l'avons cru souvent 
Formuler notre reve, et le rendre vivant 

Par la palette ou par la lyre ; 
Mais le souffle manquait, et personne n'a pu 
Deviner quel etait le poeme inconnu 

Que nous ne savions pas traduire. 

Then, his childish warning off the priests : " Tell them I have 
read Voltaire." Finally his cry : " Take me to the Church ; God 
can do more than any physician." His final happy death, after 
receiving the last Sacraments. Poor fellows ! with their sad 
motto : The Academy, the Asylum, or the Morgue ! How the 
heart of a Vincent de Paul, or a Philip Neri, would have yearned 
over your helplessness and your genius, and wept for your follies 
and your sins ! And how lesser folk would have liked to burst 
into your attic, and tear your valuable papers from the fire, and 
send ruddy blazes out of more ready material dancing up the 
chimney ; and pelted you with sandwiches till you cried, Hold ! 
and then sat down with you on a soap-box or on your dingy bed ; 
and filled out in long ruby glasses the Margaux or Lafitte you 
had not tasted for many a day; and finally settled down to a 
calm, long, soporific smoke, and listened to the song, the anec- 
dote, the bon mot f that would turn the gloom of Phlegethon into 
an Attic night, and the lentils of a Daniel into a supper of the 
gods ! 

CIV. 

Pascal, too, found a rare helper and sympathizer in his sister, 
— the Madame Perrier, who wrote his life so briefly, but signifi- 
cantly. Not, indeed, that he needed any spiritual strength or 
support from any external power; for he was a self-contained 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 143 

spirit, and thought little of human help. And his genius was 
colossal. Like Aristotle he seems to have thought out a whole 
scheme of creation, unaided. It is rather a singular instance of 
human folly that he should have been considered a sceptic. 
There is no stopping the tongues of men. The same charge 
was levelled against Dr. Newman. Mozeley attributes the great 
popularity of the Oratorian in England to that. Perhaps there 
were never two men who believed more intensely and unreserv- 
edly. But the Frenchman lacked serenity. He lost his nobility 
by engaging, not so much in a lost cause, as a bad cause. He 
descended to cynicism and sarcasm — the expression of a form of 
lower mental condition. And this, too, affected his greatest, if 
most imperfect work. When the Provincial Letters are forgotten 
or neglected as splenetic sarcasm, and have passed away like the 
Junius and Drapier Letters, and have become but the study of 
the connoisseur, his " Pensees " will remain, broken fragments of 
an incomplete, but immortal work. 



CV. 

What judgment will posterity pass on them? It would be 
difficult to say. But if we may gauge the future by the present, 
we would say that the verdict of a more enlightened age than ours 
will be, that Pascal was no sceptic, though a bold inquirer; that 
his marvellous mental keenness and vigor were only equalled by 
his rigid asceticism; that Nature had made him pious, and circum- 
stances made him proud ; that these " Thoughts " which reveal 
to us his inner life are beautiful and deep beyond words ; that 
they would have even the color of that inspiration which comes 
from Nature and Grace united, were it not for a dark shadow 
which stretches itself over all, making the philosophy of them less 
clear, the truth of them less apparent, the study of them a task of 
anxiety and suspicion, instead of being one of edification and 
delight. 

CVI. 

In fact, I know but of one case where a sister's influence was 
hurtful ; and that was the case of Ernest Renan. It is impossi- 



144 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

ble to explain how a woman, and a Bretonne, could have lent the 
aid of her sisterly influence to wean him away from the sanctuary, 
and then from the Church itself. There is something inexpressi- 
bly revolting- about it, because I think, of all human loves, that of 
a sister is the most abiding and unselfish. In a mother's love 
there is a kind of identification with her child, his triumphs, his 
defeats, which, by the reflection on herself, takes away the abso- 
lute disinterestedness. Conjugal love is more intense, but for that 
reason more intermittent. But there's not a trace of self in that 
earnest wistful gaze which a beloved sister casts after the poor 
young fellow who has just gone out from the sanctity of home- 
life into the world's arena ; nor a thought of self in the way the 
silent heart broods over shattered hopes, and takes back to its 
sanctuary the broken relics of the idol, once worshipped, now, 
alas! only protected from the gaze of a scornful world. 



CVII. 

Post tenebras lux ! The motto, of all places on earth, of the 
city of Geneva ! Well, no matter. Here is light now in early 
spring, or rather in expiring winter; and it is very welcome. For 
much as I love my fire and lamp, there is a certain regeneration 
in body and soul and spirits, in these days which are lengthening 
out, bit by bit, as the sun ascends higher in the heavens, and the 
dawn breaks earlier, and the twilight lingers even in the steel-blue 
sky. Winter is still here. The sirocco-breath of the east wind 
withers all vegetation, and seems to dry the very blood in the 
veins of men. Delicate people crouch all day by their fires ; and 
look out despairingly at the gray, mournful skies, and the earth 
parched and hardened by the wind. And yet there is hope; 
for the days are drawing out, and the nights are shortening ; and 
there is light, light ; and we feel we are rushing on to the time 
when the summer twilight will fade away only to break out into 
the resurrection of a roseate summer dawn. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 145 

CVIII. 

I could not help feeling this evening, as the great red shield of 
the moon rose solemnly above the trees, and Jupiter hung like a 
dewdrop in the purpled sky, that it should be a great consolation 
for us to know, that whatever may befall us, little creatures of God, 
— death, life, sorrow, joy, — the great wheel of existence swings in 
its beautiful and perfect equilibrium before the face of God ; and 
that even when we shall have departed hence, and our place shall 
know us no more, there never shall be rift nor break in that cos- 
mical perfection of sun, and star, and season, that seems to know 
its own beauty, and to exult in it before the face of its Maker. 
" When the morning stars sang together," may be more than a 
figure of speech ; and it is something to know that, above this 
little globe of sorrow, which we so strangely call " the valley of 
tears," the great universe is swinging softly and majestically; and: 
that neither Time, nor Death, the two great solvents, can wither 
the beauty, or tarnish the lustre of all those other creatures of 
Omnipotence that are so far beyond the reach of our powers to 
comprehend ; but not beyond the scope of reason to imagine, or 
interpret. 

CIX. 

Then I began to consider, why did that thought strike me just 
then, and not at any other time ? I had seen burning noons and 
glorious sunsets without number ; I had watched the faint sickle 
of the new moon in the West, and thanked her for her benevolence, 
when, gibbous and hunchbacked and unbeautiful, she made all 
things beneath her beautiful. But this idea of the symmetry and 
perfection and harmony of Creation had not struck me so forcibly 
before. Then I remembered that it was but imperfect moons and 
declining suns I had seen. The former excluded all idea of 
rounded and perfected beauty ; the latter, with all their splendors, 
were the funereal accompaniments of the death of day. But this 
great, red moon, burning through the latticed trees, and then 
paling away as it mounted higher and higher in heaven, was a 
symbol of the perfect beauty to which all things tend ; and it rose 
in the night-dawn, young and beautiful, and with all the promise 



146 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of uninterrupted empire all through the silent but eloquent 
watches of the night, until the white dawn came, and it would 
fade away, silent as a ghost, down the long avenues of paling 
stars, towards its grave in the West. 



CX. 

You see then, to be an optimist you must have two associa- 
tions — youth and the idea of ultimate perfection. Hence every 
child is an optimist, believing that all things are fair and beautiful; 
and absolutely idealizing the ugliest things until they put on the 
wings and outlines of perfect and immaculate loveliness. It is the 
glorious exaggeration of imagination without experience to clip 
its wings and bring it down to earth. It is only when the wheels 
of life begin to move more slowly, as they get clogged and debili- 
tated, that we begin to take analytical views of life ; and as our 
shadows lengthen in the sunset, we allow the past to project its 
gloom athwart our life-path, until it ends in the near perspective 
of the tomb. Then, we begin to reason, and shake our heads 
mournfully, and speculate, and haply become merely resigned. 
But the full tide of life creeps slowly through our veins ; and we 
begin to pity our far-off selves, who in the imprudence and inex- 
perience of youth, we remember to have been intoxicated with the 
delirium of life, and to have said aloud, or to our own hearts : 
All is fair and beautiful ; and all is well ! 



CXI. 

Then, too, we must have the idea, so uncommon, so slippery, 
so often confuted, and as often revived, that all things round to 
final perfection. It needs a healthy brain, or well-defined religious 
principles, to comprehend it. The whole of literature seems to be 
a wail of protest against it. Now and again, a great optimist, 
bravely cheers us onward with an expression of faith, like the song 
of Pippa ; or the lines : 

There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall live as before ; 
The evil is null — is naught — is silence implying sound ; 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 147 

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more ; 
On the earth, the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect round. 

But this is rare ! Even when Tennyson seeks to lift his verse 
on the wings of hope, he finds they are broken, and he falls to 
earth and sorrow again. And yet, there is no word so detested 
by men as that word " pessimism " ; nor is there any verdict so 
dreaded by those teachers called philosophers and poets, as the 
sentence that their teaching is pessimistic. How is this ? With 
so strong a tendency towards the evil thing, how is it that men so 
much dread the evil reputation ? Yet, when you come to con- 
sider it, you will find that these writers, one and all, fall into 
that dreadful category of St. Paul : " Without God, and with no 
hope in this world." 

CXII. 

On the other hand, you will find that the teachers who point 
with hope to this final perfection, even though they do not belong 
to the household of the faith, seem to be carried, almost in spite 
of themselves, along the current of pure, intellectual thought, 
towards it. All the terrible contradictions of life seem to merge 
in one great unification; and that is, that the great positives 
of life, — virtue, holiness, happiness, health, — are the realities that 
abide, and continue with a perpetual and seemingly unconscious 
bias, or rather destiny, towards final perfection; and that the 
negatives, — sin, vice, disease, death, — although obstructions, can 
never pass beyond their negative form ; and finally fade away, or 
are merged in their positives, until Evil disappears ; and there only 
remain the Beautiful and the Good. These thinkers, whom some 
call Ensemblists, or those who view Life and the Universe as a 
whole, come very close to the poet who sings : 

for somehow good 
Shall be the final goal of ill ; 

and very near the Apostle of the Gaudetes, who assures us " that 
the sorrows of this life are not to be compared with the glory to 
come that shall be revealed in us." 



148 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

CXIII. 

But this dream of final perfection and loveliness, after all, is it 
a forecast of what shall be in the final evolution of our species ; 
or rather is it not the noble and cherished tradition of a race that 
once possessed it, and lost it ? It would be difficult for the Hege- 
lian school to construct a scheme where all things would round 
to perfection, considering that they place their theories on the finite 
and limited nature of things, which therefore are necessarily im- 
perfect ; and from whose very essence arise the concomitants of 
imperfection — sin, disease, death. Hegel denies the immortality 
of the soul, except in the restricted and unsatisfactory sense of an 
absorption in the Universal of the individual. But how we are to 
pass the bounds of imperfection, that is limitation, and reach to 
the Unlimited, the Perfect, he cannot say. And with the more 
modern evolutionist theory, the idea is still more intangible and 
difficult to seize. The slow processes of the suns have not 
brought us far on the road to final perfection. There is evil — 
disease, vice, death. Has the horizon of human hope a gleam of 
a better land beyond it ; or do not rather the shadows darken as 
we approach, without the lamp of faith, that bourn of all human 
sufferings and joys, where the shadows of death encompass us, 
and the perils of hell may find us ? 

CXIV. 

On the other hand, how noble is the tradition, that we did 
possess that perfection to which all things tend, but fell from it ; 
that, therefore, final perfection is not the lurid dream of insensate 
beasts, so much as the far foreshadowing of what must be, because 
it once was ; that, therefore, being fallen, we have the power of ris- 
ing again to the heights whence we were precipitated; and, above 
all, we are not a race, moving on to the goal, and sifting itself of all 
its weaker elements, so that in the survival of the fittest, its dreams 
of ambition may be attained. But the majesty of the individual 
soul shines out conspicuous in the lofty scheme of rehabilitation 
and resurrection ; and race-abstractions, race-destinations, etc., 
give place to the supreme importance that attaches to each single 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 



149 



creation of the Almighty in His scheme of universal redemption. 
When we speak, therefore, of the tendency of all things to final 
perfection, we mean the recovery of lost rights and happenings, 
lost dignities and glory ; and these not incommensurate with our 
state ; but our righteous privileges and prerogatives, which the sin 
of our ancestors forfeited ; but which we may, through the sacrifice 
of our Elder Brother, gloriously win back again. 




PART III 

SPRING 



('5') 



SPRING 



i. 



My garden looks well just now, although the cold lingers, and 
now and again a shower of hail, flung from some refrigera- 
tor high up in the heavens, threatens to break the fragile stems of 
my tulips, and to scatter the white, milky blossoms on my apple- 
trees. The crocuses, frail, little things, although too delicate for 
winter that " lingers even in the lap of May," have long since dis- 
appeared, leaving only the long green leaves from which the 
yellow and purple blossoms have vanished. The beautiful hya- 
cinths too, with their wax-like bells, in white and purple and crim- 
son, have fallen to earth and languish there. Their superb 
blossoms, full of that subtle perfume that haunts us from our 
childhood, were too proud for the long smooth stalks that bore 
them ; and, under the heavy April showers that filled their sweet 
bells, they were borne downward to earth; and, like so many 
other fallen things, are unable to rise again. But the hardy daffo- 
dils and narcissi spread their broad discs or their saffron trumpets 
to the sun ; and, despising the legendary origin of their name, the 
latter refuse to droop or languish over lake or grass or brown 
bed ; but flaunt their chaste splendors to sun or breeze, and look 
down upon the more highly decorated denizens beneath them, as 
a pure soul might look upon the meretricious splendors of fashion, 
and rest happy in its own simplicities. 



II. 

But the tulips, transplanted from their marshy beds in Holland, 
appear to have absorbed all the coloring from earth and sky and 
transmuted it into their own emphatic and pronounced splendors. 
They are extremely beautiful. I can imagine a St. Francis or 
some minor poet saying : — 

(153) 



154 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

"Who made you, little ones; and who made you so lovely and so 
frail?" 

Was it on the broad disc of the resplendent sun, whence 
light, with its component tints, for ever issues, that the Artist 
spread His colors, and was it with its soft, lambent pencils He 
drew on those glistening and curled leaves such flames of beauty 
and harmony ? Did He watch the gentle dawn to catch the pink 
blush that He has limned just here, and the reluctant evening for 
the red flush of impatience, or the saffron of sorrow, that He has 
wrought into your soft and shining depths ? And was it from 
the corona and photosphere of His mighty palette that He drew 
these red and yellow fires along the surface of your bells ; and 
shaded them deep down into your mysterious breasts whence the 
curved and curled corolla springs shaded, like a violet in a valley 
of mosses, or a primrose beneath the shadow of an oak ? And, 
what was the archetype from which He drew such lines of beauty 
and such blendings and harmonies of color ? Where did the 
model exist ? In what garden of Eden did He behold your proto- 
types ? Or, was it from the secret of His own surpassing beauty 
He devised your loveliness and made you another and a meeker 
manifestation of that undying principle that underlies every opera- 
tion of His handmaid, Nature — the principle, that all things round 
to beauty, and that in the spiral of a vast nebula which covers 
half the heavens, and in the curve of a little leaf that shelters a 
tiny insect, order and beauty and proportion and harmony subsist 
— a reflex of the Mind of the Eternal ? 



III. 

What place has the unconscious chemistry of Nature here ? 
What does blind Nature know of beauty, that she could weave 
and paint, by instinct only, such unparalleled loveliness ? Here 
are types, here is method, here is a plan ; and here must be 
Mind ! Come and sit in this shaded gallery in this ancient city ! 
It is a long gallery, carefully lighted, with but little sun ; yet there 
is a cool shadow in the air that tempers the superabundant light 
outside into a soft, gray, mellow color as of an autumnal twilight 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 155 

A sentinel stands at the door — an Imperial hussar. Yes ! there 
must be something royal and priceless here. You enter. The 
place is still as a church. It is a reverend place. People speak 
in whispers. Heads are bowed in an attitude of prayer — the silent, 
and eloquent prayer of imitation ; and all eyes are directed upward 
to the Holy Thing — the Shrine. And what is it ? Only a pic- 
ture ! It occupies that entire wall. The rest of the gallery is 
bare. No acolyte pictures are grouped around. It would not be 
fair to them ; although no eye could be distracted from that 
supreme beauty that seems not to be limned, but to hover in front 
of and above that picture on the wall. Men, hushed in wonder, 
say in their hearts : It is not human ! No earthly pencil painted 
it ! No human mind hath dreamed it ! Yet there is the subscrip- 
tion : Pinxit Raff ae lie Sanzio. 

Then it is the work of human hands. And by degrees, as the 
first wonder subsides, men begin to ponder and think, and imagine 
how the dream came, how the artist brooded over it ; how he 
mixed his colors ; how he drew and drew until the new creation 
dawned on the brown canvas ; and he fell down and worshipped 
his own work ! 

IV. 

Raffaelle could paint that Lily of Israel, that Rose of Sharon; 
but he could not create this tiny flower in my fingers. Yet here, 
too, is type, and method, and plan, and — mind. Who can deny 
it ? If only mind could create a Sistine Madonna, how could 
chance create that which is greater, lovelier ? Chance could not 
draw a line of her garments, nor give a hue to her cheek. Chance 
could never put that mother's look in the soft brown eyes ; nor 
that dreamy far-sight into the eyes of the Child. Gather all the 
azures, and ochres, and browns, and scarlets that are scattered in 
plant and mineral throughout creation, and cast them down on a 
palette. Heap together pencils and brushes. Draw the canvas 
tight, and call on chance to paint a cherub's face or the trumpet 
of an archangel. You will wait for eternity before chance can 
come to your beck and call. And how, then, could unconscious 
chemistry — the mere fortuitous coincidence of atoms — create this 
floral beauty that springs from the dull, brown clods of my gar- 



156 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

den-beds ? Here is a little water, and a little oil — that is all ! 
Who combined them into such a lovely form ? Has water these 
potencies of color in itself; and has oil in itself that sweet, subtle 
fragrance ? And this outward curve, like a lip turned backwards 
in the coquetry of anger, who hath given it ? And who hath 
stopped the flame-red that burns from the bottom of the chalice, 
and toned it away into this beautiful saffron, which itself fades 
away at the lips ? " Chance ! " " Unconscious chemistry ! " It 
is against all the traditions of our experience — all the arguments 
of a reasoning mind. 



" We don't know ! " Well, that at least is humble — just a 
shade better than the sneers of a positive infidelity. I have no 
right to find fault with the wayside beggar whose breast is bur- 
dened with the speaking tablet : 

I am blind ! 

It is his misfortune, and an unspeakable one. So, too, when 
a man says : " I have no faith. I do not know, nor believe," I 
have hardly the privilege of being angry with him. It is only 
when he comes to positive assertion or denial that I am privi- 
leged not only to pity his ignorance, but to refute it. If such a 
one came before the Sistine Madonna and said : " It is a daub ; 
the colors are badly laid, and the drawing is but second-hand," 
the artists sitting around would promptly expel him as a sacri- 
legious inept. And if he went further and said : " Yes, it is pretty 
here and there; but, mark you, this gallery is draughty; it is 
but a death-trap," they would say : " Go forth, then, and seek 
your miserable health elsewhere. What you want is sulphur- 
etted hydrogen, not a divine dream." And if he went further, 
and declared : " Raffaelle Sanzio never existed. What you be- 
hold is the fortuitory result of a few pieces of carmine, ochre, 
and cobalt, which came together by chance, and wrought them- 
selves into the face and figure of a Woman and Child," they 
would probably hand him over to the Commissioner of Police. 
Yet all this is what we read in the ravings of Materialism and 
Positive Philosophy. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 157 

VI. 

Hip ! hip ! hurrah ! The first swallows have come. I had 
been watching for them these last few warm days in early April, 
and I scanned the sky every morning and evening for the white 
breast and black wings that cut the air like a knife. I was disap- 
pointed. I saw only a lazy crow winging his dreary way towards 
the west ; or a great crane slowly laboring with his wide gray 
wings towards the sunset; or a thrush or blackbird whir- 
ring in alarm towards a sheltering tree ; or an indolent sparrow 
who pecked at the ground between my feet. Then, one evening, 
the 1 6th of April of this year, I looked up suddenly from my 
book ; and, no ? — yes, indeed, there were my pretty favorites, 
tumbling, tossing, gliding, flapping through the air, as in last Sep- 
tember, when I bade them farewell, and without sign or warning 
they were gone ! Gone, too, with some regrets and remorse, for 
my gardener and general servant, in a sudden and very unusual 
fit of tidiness, had torn down a mud nest beneath the eaves of my 
stable; and it was pitiable to see the young swallows swinging 
round and round their dilapidated home, having no longer, liter- 
ally, a place whereon to lay their heads. Fortunately the weather 
was warm and the nights were mild, so that none perished ; but I 
felt a kind of shame in thinking what ideas of our inhospitality 
these winged wanderers would carry away to sunny Spain or 
Algiers ; and I was deeply anxious to know if they would forgive 
and forget, unlike ourselves, and grace our little garden and house 
once more with their gentle and gracious presence. 

VII. 

Well, here they are ! They passed away silent as ghosts ; and 
silent as ghosts they have returned. There was no sale of effects as 
they departed, no bundling up of impedimenta, no display of feel- 
ing, not even a farewell ! They floated high above my garden on 
the evening of September 29th, and on the morrow I looked 
in vain for them. And now, again, swiftly and silently, they 
have returned. What long, lonely wintry hours were they away ! 
What a mighty multitude of thoughts have swept, like a river, 



158 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

through my brain ! What fears, hopes, anxieties have burned 
their way into gray ashes since the swallows went ! And here 
are they again, careless of time and human vicissitudes and vexa- 
tion ; here to roll and toss and plow the air like the vibrations of 
light, so swift and sudden and silent are their movements ; caring 
only for the day and the hour of existence, and only studying 
alternations of weather, as to whether they shall seek their living 
food high up in the summer air, or poised above the darkened 
river, when the heavy clouds bend down weighted with rain, and 
the flies are languid from the pressure. But here they are, har- 
bingers of Spring, and its most swift and elastic messengers ; and 
here they shall remain during the long summer evenings, and 
autumn twilights, until the first frost warns them to preen their 
wings for flight and migrate to foreign latitudes. 

VIII. 

Yet, think of where they have been, and what sights they 
have seen since last they hovered above my head. With their 
great strong wings they have cut their way over wood and 
forest and river ; over town and field and hamlet, heedless of the 
world beneath them, unconscious of all the fever and fret that eat 
like cankers into the ever turbid, ever restless breast of man. Like 
exiled seraphs, winging their way back to Heaven, they have 
passed by night and day over the troubled world, but one instinct 
in their own breasts — to reach the objective of their autumnal 
flight. They have paused to gain strength for the effort beneath 
the white walls of the lighthouse, rested on the ball at the sum- 
mit, or on the rail of the iron gallery. And then, on the wings 
of hope and self-reliance they have launched the little barks of 
their existence above the eternal deep. Brave little voyagers ! 
No mariner's compass directs you ; no white sails buoy you above 
the trembling waves ; no haven opens its sheltering arms to re- 
ceive you ; no lighthouse flashes its welcome warning along your 
line of flight. Beneath you roars the tempest, and great seas lift 
up their ravening jaws to engulf you ; but over all you glide, 
buoyant and triumphant ; for He who made you is your Pilot and 
your Captain; and He hath given you sense for science, and 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 159 

curbed all hostile elements that might hinder or endanger your 
lonely pilgrimage across His seas. And one day, you see beneath 
you not the green, barren waters, but yellow fields and purple 
vineyards ; and you know your journey is at an end, and that here 
in the warm and aromatic air, you can plunge and toss at leisure 
until the dream of the North comes back, and bids you hie home- 
wards again. 

IX. 

Of all physical existences on or around this planet, theirs 
seems to be the most perfect and joyous. Never touching this 
dull earth, except to rest or sleep (and then always out of danger), 
they seem to have no enemies ; and to judge by their movements, 
there seems to be the most fraternal and unbroken affection amongst 
themselves. You never see them peck at one another and quarrel, 
like more terrestrial birds. They chase one another through the 
perfumed air, but it is in sheer joyance of spirit, like the play of 
children on summer evenings. You never see them eat. They 
are too dainty to rest and wrestle with wriggling worms. They 
pass through a swarm of midges ; and the midges feed them. 
But think of the freedom, the ecstasy, the sense of power and 
security, the physical delight with which they glide through the 
air, with the swiftness almost of spirits ; and dart and shoot along 
over rivers and meadows, over fresh budding trees and ancient for- 
ests, now almost invisible as a skylark ambushed in a cloud, and 
now almost touching your cheek as they sweep suddenly from the 
skies and pass like a gleam of light above your head. But it is 
in the evening and especially around old churches that they seem 
to be electrified with the very exuberance of existence. How 
they dart and flash in and out, crossing each other's path by a 
hair's breadth, and screaming in the mad convulsions of delight, as 
children in the market-place in the summer evening play ! Then, 
at twilight far up in the zenith, almost so far as to be invisible, they 
hold their diurnal parliament, grouped specks on the gray azure of 
the sky ; and then sink down, one by one, to their mud cabins be- 
neath the eaves, until the morning sun calls them forth to another 
day of boundless ecstasy and freedom and delight. 



160 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 



Yesterday, a great white sea-gull swooped down from the 
sky, rested for a moment on the brown earth in my garden, and 
instantly rose, and swept with great beats of his wings over the 
wall and away. He was a waif in from the marshes and sedgy 
rivers where flocks of gulls congregate in the cold weather to 
seek their food. The theory, I believe, is that fish seek the warm 
depths of the sea, away from the chilled surface in winter and 
early spring ; and that the seabirds must come inland for their 
food. There is a certain kind of pathos in it. The black crows 
fraternize with them genially; and it is no uncommon sight to 
see a ploughed field almost covered with those black and white 
specks, amicably feeding together. Nay, these sea-waifs actually 
pick up the tricks of their sable comrades, and perch on the 
sheep and even cows, seeking their parasites for food. It is a 
grimy speculation ; but it is impossible not to feel a kind of 
sympathy for those noble seabirds, hanging over a lazy sedgy 
river instead of the great, green, glorious breakers, which are its 
natural dominion ; and swooping down to a common worm, like 
a mere sparrow or robin, instead of plunging into their own 
mighty reservoir, and searching it with their keen, fierce eyes for 
their natural food. And hence, you never hear them, in their 
inland winter exile, scream as they do when in the teeth of the 
storm, and above the roaring of seas, they poise themselves with 
such exquisite power and grace ; and feel that life is a glorious 
thing, and that infinity of sea and sky are around them and 
above them ; and they must tell their emotions to the vastness 
above them and the immensities beneath. 



XL 

I remember well what a pretty etching in colors one of these 
seabirds made many years ago. I was at Ardmore on a sunny 
day in August. It was a holiday, snatched from much work. 
Otherwise I would not tell what a lazy, delightful, do-nothing, 
think-nothing afternoon I had, stretched there on the fragrant 
purple heather, just sloped enough to enable me to see the great 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. l6i 

level sea-plain that shone in the sun, and shimmered in the tiny- 
shadows, until at last it faded away in a dreamy mist at the far 
horizon. A very temperate modest lunch was in the little bag- 
by my side, and I was reading and pondering over that most 
pathetic poem of that most unhappy poet — the " Nameless " of 
Clarence Mangan. Painted on the otherwise unbroken blue 
canvas of the deep was a tiny triangular sail, apparently motion- 
less; and only one other speck of white disturbed the mono- 
tone of sky and sea. It was a sea-gull, so near me that I felt 
I could almost touch him; and he was poised motionless, a tiny 
cloud-like radiance above the deep. Two hundred feet beneath, 
the deep blue sea fretted itself away in a fringe of foam that 
crawled up the black cobalt rocks. That was the only sound 
or motion in nature ; for the bird hung motionless without flap of 
wing or turn of head, though I could see his fierce eyes hungrily 
devouring the waters beneath. Then, suddenly, like a bolt from: 
the blue, he fell downwards, and struck the waves ; and, in an 
instant, emerged with a great silver fish squirming and flashing in 
his strong beak. This he beat lifeless against the rocks, and pro- 
ceeded lazily to devour. 

XII. 

" Yes," I thought, " there are but two great classes in nature 
— the victor and the victim — the aggressor and the aggressed. 
All others resolve themselves into these. There is more truth in 
" Maud " than in " In Memoriam." There is less poetry, but 
more philosophy in — 

For Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal ; 
The May-fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike. 
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey, 

than in the belief: 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth with vain desire 

Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, 
Or but subserves another's gain. 

Not only do men not believe it, but all their ill-concealed sym- 
pathies are with aggressors, not with the victims. Hence the need 



1 6? UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of a Revelation ! Nothing but the Revelation of God has tamed 
the savage in man. Civilization has not done it, and cannot do it. 
Nay, civilization is but the net success of brute force — the sur- 
vival of the strongest. Life is warfare. The elite are the elect, 
chosen in the sifting of the battle from the weak and the frail. 
Strength alone commands admiration, and challenges success. 

XIII. 

All the great world-names are symbolical of strength. Cyrus, 
Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon — all stand out from the 
history of mankind, raised and embossed by pure power of ag- 
gression and attack. And no matter how fascinating might be the 
conquered races in their history, or music, or philosophy, the clash 
of arms has drowned their 'appeal for sympathy, and the waving 
of standards has obscured their national attractions ; and the 
world sees only the victor's heel on the neck of the slave ; and 
hears only the Vce victis ! as the ultimate paean and song of con- 
quering humanity. In the Napoleonic wars, for instance, there 
was something pathetic in the desperate valor with which the 
Austrian hussars and German legions threw themselves on the 
invading and aggressive French hordes. One's sympathy goes 
out to them in their heroic efforts to resist the irresistible ; but 
when we see them fleeing before the merciless onslaught of these 
victorious sans-culottes — the lean, hungry wolves of the Revolu- 
tion, marshalled in a kind of madness, and inspired by the pres- 
ence of the War-god, the Invincible, insensibly we turn aside from 
the valor that has failed to the strength that has conquered ; and 
we lift in imagination our bearskins on our bayonets, and stand 
in our stirrups, and hail the little, pale-faced, delicate-handed god 
that has hurled for the hundredth time the crashing battle-bolts 
of his battalions on the fleeing and panic-stricken enemy. Con- 
science may cry " unjust," " brutal," " aggressive," to this unwar- 
ranted invasion, prompted by the lust of ambition ; but the lower 
instinct says " glorious," " marvellous," " sublime ; " and the feet 
of pilgrims wear the flags around the black catafalque with that 
simple inscription, " Napoleon," beneath the dome of the Invalides; 
and pass by the shrine of saint and scholar to worship at the altar 
of the Destroyer. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 163 

XIV. 

And to turn aside from such world-tragedies, we find in the 
daily lives of the multitude the same aggression, the same weak- 
ness, the same worship. The man that asserts himself and 
attacks is the hero; until all society resolves itself into the two 
classes — the victors and the conquered. The shopkeeper driv- 
ing a bargain behind his counter ; the lawyer, attacking a victim 
in the witness-box ; the physician, speculating how much he will 
charge as fee, whilst he feels the fevered pulse of the patient ; the 
Cabinet- Minister, legislating against turbulent, if justifiable agita- 
tion ; the opposition, challenging him ; the author, attacking an 
abuse ; the Press, attacking him ; — all are examples of the uni- 
versal law : 

For Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal. 

And if, in the higher circles of society there is a mute code of 
morals, called politeness, it is only a tacit armistice, as if they 
would say : Let us sheathe our claws, and forbear from attacking 
each other, face to face ; let us be mutually tolerant, and let us 
study each other's comfort. Life will be otherwise intolerable. 
Let us suspend the Law of Nature, not because we love, but just 
because it is mutually helpful to be mutually tolerant and un- 



XV. 

But this unwritten code, this tacit understanding, does not 
apply even in the most civilized society to anyone who steps from 
the ranks, and assumes an attitude of singularity. Mediocrity 
alone claims toleration even in the best circles. " Let us be uni- 
form at any cost," so say the Philistines. " Whosoever addeth to 
his stature, addeth to his discomfort." How all the savage in our 
nature breaks out when a child of destiny steps forward (it may 
be reluctantly, but destiny is imperative) and says : " I am not as 
you ; my ways are not your ways." What a howl of execration 
goes out against him ; how all the instincts of the circus and the 
arena break through the fragile crust of civilization, and demand 
the retribution due to offended mediocrity ! When Gifford in the 



164 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Quarterly, for instance, and Terry in Blackwood, whipped the soul 
out of poor Keats, the world laughed, and said : " Serves him 
right ! Why did not he, the apothecary's apprentice, keep to his 
gallipots, instead of showing us our inferiority by singing his im- 
mortal songs?" And the jealous verdicts of an ex-cobbler and 
an actor were taken as infallible by a world that prided itself on 
its culture and taste. " Great poetry," says an American critic, 
"is more intolerable than bad morals." Quite true ! The reason 
is simple, and easy to find. The former exasperates us by a sense 
of superiority, which we are compelled to feel and accept. The 
latter flatter us by a happy intimation of our own perfections. 
The former we condemn and dislike ; the latter we also condemn, 
but they are a wonderful salve to our own self-esteem. 

XVI. 

This is probably one of the reasons why that modern Pagan, 
Goethe, has so many critics, and such few admirers, of his poetry; 
yet so many apologists for his morals. One of his most recent 
commentators tells us that at an English university a Goethe stu- 
dent is as rare as a white blackbird. Probably Edmond Scherer 
is the justest and most severe critic of his poetry. Matthew Ar- 
nold is a cold, cautious worshipper, who would burn a pastil, but 
not a thurible of incense before this deity. Professor Blackie, 
following the lead of Carlyle, his countryman, is quite Celtic in 
his fervor. But that is all. Yet, when it comes to speak of 
his life, especially in the great test-case of his attitude towards 
women, there is such unanimity in seeking excuses for what an 
old-fashioned chivalry and morality would deem the most flagrant 
violations of honor and virtue, that one is tempted to think that 
the world has advanced farther backwards towards pagan ideals 
than we had hitherto suspected. In fact, we cannot measure the 
gulf that yawns wider and wider every day between the Church 
and the world more accurately than by taking their respective 
estimates, from time to time, of those they consider their heroes 
and their saints. For example, fidelity in the matter of manly 
friendship has hitherto been considered a noble feature in manly 
character. From the time of Damon and Pythias downward, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 165 

friendship has been considered a sacred thing. Now, Goethe was 
notoriously unfaithful to his friends. He dropped them when he 
tired of them, or they failed to serve him. He had not retained 
one friend against his old age. Every one knows his treatment 
of Jacobi and Lavater. 

XVII. 

Can this be explained? Certainly. "Goethe's high sincerity 
and fidelity to his best self compelled him in many instances to 
sacrifice relations which, though once helpful and mutually stim- 
ulating, had become a burden and a hindrance to his growth. 
This is hardly selfishness, but a duty which every sincere man 
owes to himself. You can do your friend no good by feigning for 
him a feeling which no longer possesses you ; and all that talk 
about fidelity under such circumstances is but a remnant of the 
old feudal ideal." 1 Again, the general sense of mankind hitherto has 
deemed it dishonorable to trifle with the affections of women, or to 
betray them. Goethe was notorious for his profligacy in this re- 
spect. Even Carlyle gasps a little when speaking of them. Now 
hear Professor Blackie : " Hence the rich story of Goethe's loves, 
with which scandal of course and prudery have made their market ; 
but which, when looked into carefully, were just as much part of 
his genius as ' Faust,' and ' Iphigenia,' a part, indeed, without 
which ' Faust ' and ' Iphigenia ' could never have been written. 
Let no man therefore take offence when I say roundly that 
Goethe was always falling in love, and that I consider this a great 
virtue in his character. Had he not done so, he would not have 
been half the man, nor the tenth part of the poet that he was." 
The same Professor quotes with approval this extract from the 
" Journal of Caroline Fox " : 

"With regard to Goethe's character, the more Stirling examines 
it, the less he believes in his having wilfully trifled with the feelings 
of women. With regard to his selfishness, he holds that he did but 
give the fullest, freest scope for the exercise of his gift, and as we 
are all gainers thereby, we cannot call it selfishness. ' ' 

1 Boyesen's Essays on German Literature. 



166 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XVIII. 

This is almost brutal in its candor. It is a distinct apostasy 
from all that has been hitherto held as honorable amongst 
Christian and civilized nations. Nay, it would be doing them a 
dishonor, if I said that Pagans would repudiate such a low stand- 
ard of ethics in the bosom of civilized society. Where are we ? 
And what are we to think ? If excuses of this kind can be made 
for men, on the ground that they are geniuses and exceptional, 
where shall we draw the line ? Let us look back, and see how 
we have drifted. It is not so many years since Byron was ostra- 
cised and excommunicated by English society, and since Shelley 
was driven into exile by the Christian communities whose dearest 
principles he had outraged. To-day, Byron might have the most 
eligible vacant spot in Westminster Abbey, and Shelley would 
be the petted darling of half the courts and all the best society of 
Europe. 

XIX. 

I think it unfair to John Stirling to quote him in the above 
context. That opinion does not reconcile itself with the truer 
and saner verdict he had previously passed on Goethe, when his 
faculties were keener and not yet warped by the insanity of con- 
sumption, and when the last shreds of his Christian and clerical 
character had not been ruthlessly torn from him by Carlyle. In 
a letter to the latter, addressed from Funchal, towards the end of 
the year 1837, he gives a better account of his feelings towards 
the high priest of naturalism. 

" I have been looking at Goethe, especially the Life — much as a 
shying horse looks at a post. In truth, I am afraid of him. I enjoy 
and admire him so much, and I feel I could so easily be tempted to 
go along with him. And yet I have a deeply-rooted and old persua- 
sion that he was the most splendid of anachronisms. A thoroughly, 
nay, intensely Pagan life, in an age when it is men's duty to be Chris- 
tian. I therefore never take him up without a kind of inward check, 
as if I were trying some forbidden spell ; while, on the other hand, 
there is so infinitely much to be learned from him, and it is so need- 
ful to understand the world we live in, and our own age, and espe- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 67 

daily our greatest minds, that I cannot bring myself to burn my books 
as the converted magicians did, or sink them as did Prospero. There 
must have been, I think, some prodigious defect in his mind, to let 
him hold such views as his, about women and some other things ; and 
in another respect, I find so much coldness and hollowness as to the 
highest truths, and feel so strongly that the Heaven he looks up to is 
but a vault of ice, — that these two indications, leading to the same 
conclusion, go far to convince me that he was & profoundly immoral 
and irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever 
belonged to any one. ' ' 

XX. 

This is the wholly sane and judicious verdict of a man who 
still clung to the time-worn but venerable traditions that have 
come down to us from all that time and thought have garnered 
of the best. And that is the colder judgment of our own time, 
which has allowed the red-hot enthusiasms of the past evaporate 
themselves in a worship that is as dead as that of Cybele. A 
piece of pure, cold intellectualism, a Phidian statue in the ice- 
grotto of a glacier, lit up occasionally for worship by magnesian 
and other lights — that was Goethe ! But intellectualism ! One 
of the heresies of the age ! The intellect starving out the heart, 
and demanding the sacrifice of all that is most holy and sacred 
in human emotions and aspirations, whilst stifling conscience and 
all the moral sense — there is the danger, that lies in the path of 
all modern reformers and progressivists in the supreme matter 
of education ! 

XXL 

Can you explain it? Very easily. Literature has usurped 
the place of religion, as the guide and teacher of mankind ; and 
religious persons have not been wise enough to retaliate and 
carry the war into the enemy's country. It must be close on fifty 
years ago since Carlyle mockingly boasted that the press had 
taken the place of the pulpit; and that religion had been rele- 
gated to the organ-loft and psalm-singing. He was speaking of 
his own experiences ; or rather of his experiences of Protestant- 
ism, for he never entered a church for the purposes of worship. 



1 68 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

He was cognizant, however, of the vitality of Catholicity, which 
lie admitted in so many words, and still more by the fierce viru- 
lence with which he attacked it. But the fact remains that litera- 
ture throughout the whole nineteenth century assumed a didactic 
and even dogmatic tone, which ran through novel, essay, poem, 
article, and which was, of course, unrestrained except by literary 
canons. Hence, we find, Goethe had a gospel ; so had George 
Eliot ; so had Carlyle ; so had Tennyson ; so had Browning. 
The troubadours of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, if they 
could return from the shades, would stare aghast at the rhyming 
prophets of our age, who preach a kind of pious rogation to a 
generation that is sick unto death. 

XXII. 

The strange thing, however, is that these preachers taught 
higher doctrine than that which was the rule of their own lives, 
as if their early Christian instruction refused to be smothered ; or 
as if a grave sense of responsibility forced itself into the words of 
the teacher, though it was powerless to modify his life. Hence, 
in Goethe, we find recurring frequently the triple search after 
happiness, as he supposes that happiness is the summum bonum 
of life. Does his hero seek it in voluptuousness ? He fails. In 
intellectualism ? He fails more sadly. In altruism ? He suc- 
ceeds. At least he snatches that shadow and wraith of happiness, 
called resignation. So in the novels of George Eliot. Duty here 
takes the place of altruism, with the same result. In Carlyle, the 
supreme power is Force manifested in Law, which if you obey, 
behold Nirvana ! But what law ? The law of nature, which by 
the principle of natural selection sifts out the strongest, and per- 
mits them to live, and extinguishes the weak. He rages against 
Darwinism, and — accepts its cardinal doctrine ; he anathematizes 
evolution, and unconsciously embraces it ; repudiating Christian- 
ity, he has to fall back on some inner principles in the nature of 
things. He calls them Eternal Verities, whilst — 

Though nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravine, shrieks against his creed. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 69 

XXIII. 

It is clear, then, how needful a Revelation was to show us not 
that " Love is Nature's final law," for it is not ; but the final Law 
of Nature's Creator, which He has framed for, and wishes to be 
observed by, the rational portion of His creation. Here we break 
with Evolution. The Gospel flings a sudden light athwart its 
blind and devious ways ; and blocks its progress by a reversal of 
the universal law — the law that gives survival and success to the 
strongest. Nature is the religion of force ; Christianity, the 
religion of Love. Nature approves the strong ; Christianity 
covers the weak. The former selects the strong to confound the 
weak ; the latter, in the very imperiousness of its greatness, sifts 
out the weak and makes of them vessels of election to confound 
the strong. And nations and individuals drift apart from Chris- 
tianity and back to savage nature, in proportion as they elect to 
be proud, victorious, and triumphant, rather than humble, defeated 
and proscribed. For, in proportion as we accept the law of love, 
which is Christianity, and reject the law of self, which is Nature, 
in the same proportion do we cease to be our natural selves, — 
proud, grasping, and aggressive ; and approach the Incarnate Idea 
of God, who was humble, gentle, and self-immolating. 

XXIV. 

I never understood why Dante placed Cato near the sedgy 
lake, and as guardian to the Mount of Purgatory, until I saw the 
line of Lucan : 

Victrix causa deis placuit ; victa Catoni. 

I can sympathize with that. The patron of lost causes, the 
defender of failures, the foe of Caesars and conquerors, must have 
possessed some innate and intrinsic nobility, almost too great for 
a Pagan. And this, too, at a time when Imperial domination was 
the dream of every Roman ; and the gods, it was believed, had 
given the universe into their hands. For, though it was the proud 
Roman boast that they always spared the conquered and reduced 
the proud, it was not their religion, nor their rule of conduct. To 



170 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

stand out from one's people or nation, to repudiate their principles, 
to defy their opinions, and strike out a new noble path for oneself 
— this is heroism. Perhaps, Dante goes a little far in his Convito, 
when he says : " What man on earth was more worthy to sym- 
bolize God than Cato?" It is the hyperbole of admiration — the 
emphasis of art, as well as the science of argument. And this was 
a polemical question, because Dante was accused of a " perverse 
theology in saving the soul of an idolater and suicide." Yet, 
here as in all literature, Dante, in Cato, projected his own image. 
That " victa Catoni " must have appealed to his fancy, who wor- 
shipped lowliness in St. Francis ; and, surely, he must have written 
down his own oft- repeated expression, when he placed in the 
mouth of Cato the words : 

non c' e mestier lusinghe ! 

XXV. 

Could any punishment be too great for that great critic in the 
great Quarterly, who boasted to Harriet Martineau, with a sardonic 
grin, that he was trying to squeeze out a little more (here he used 
the gesture) oil of vitriol on the head of a poor poet whose verses 
had unhappily fallen into his hands ? He said that he and his 
collaborateurs were rather disappointed because they could not 
squeeze as much of the burning fluid into their pens as they would 
like. And one of them had the reputation of being especially 
humane in his sympathies ; and wept copiously over Burns' address 
" To a Mouse." I wonder how would that grim Rhadamanthus, 
Dante Alighieri, apportion them their places in his Inferno ? How 
would he equalize their punishment to their crime ? Think of the 
sinking of heart, bitterness of the spirit, the longing for death, which 
that poor fellow felt when the cruel, stinging sarcasms met his 
eyes ; and the burning drops fell slowly upon his soul ! How 
he yearned to hide himself from the world! How he slunk 
through the streets, a shadow of shame, and dreaded to meet the 
eyes of men ! How his friends pitied him, and were ashamed of 
him ; and how his enemies gloated over his discomfiture ! Yes ! 
what would Dante have done with these criminals ? I think I can 
imagine ! 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 171 

XXVI. 

" And lo ! we came unto a horrid lake, black as midnight seas, 
but still as a mountain pool, which sees naught but the eye of 
Heaven. Far away on the shore, a spirit doleful read a book, 
and his words came to us wearily, like the cry of a lonely bird 
that wings his way at twilight across the sedgy marshes between 
the city of the leaning tower and the sea. I turned to my Master 
and said : Sir, who might be this sad spirit ; and why is he con- 
demned to read alone unto this dreary and uninhabited lake? 
And he who had led me thither said : Wait and behold ! For 
here are punished the evil souls that in wantonness have wrought 
dire pain amongst their fellows. And lo ! as he spoke, the oily 
surface was agitated, and there appeared, struggling as if suffocated, 
the inky heads of the tormented. When they had shaken the 
thick blackness from their eyes, they stared at me and shrieked : 
Who art thou who comest to this place of torment before thy 
time ? And I trembled all over like one seized with ague, and 
turned to my guide and said, Let us go hence ! But my sweet 
master reassured me and said, Fear not, they cannot hurt thee ! 
Then turning to them he said, Know you not, you unhappy ones, 
that I am he who sang at Mantua and Rome the travels of 
Anchises' son and the loves of the fated Queen ; and this is he 
who sang of life and death, and heaven and hell ? But these evil 
spirits, when they heard that we were poets, gave vent to a hid- 
eous howling, and tore their hair, and spat at us, and said : O evil 
children of an evil calling, why have ye come to torment us 
further ? But my guide said : Be silent, ye unhappy ones ; or if 
you must speak, tell us of your evil crimes and the sad destiny 
Minos hath appointed ye. 

XXVII. 

" And one, lifting himself above his fellows, whilst the inky fluid 
rolled down his shaggy breast, and he turned from side to side in 
grievous pain, said : O mortal and immortal, be it known to ye 
that we once lived in that fairest of European cities in the Hyper- 
borean region, whose walls are washed by the 'salt waves of Forth, 



172 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

and over whose streets hangs the mighty keep where heroes were 
incarcerated. In an evil hour we took up our pens and dipped 
them in vitriolic acid, and poured the contents lavishly on the 
heads of an evil race of men, called poets. There was no one to 
check us in our course of homicide ; for all men feared us ; and 
now, alas ! we are condemned to this frightful punishment for our 
iniquities in the light. This lake of Stygian horrors in which we 
are immersed is a lake of printer's ink, worse ten thousand times 
than the fetid waters that float their bituminous and stinking 
waves above the fated cities. Every half hour there drips from 
above a tiny rain of vitriol that burns our bald scalps, and streams 
into our eyes and blinds us ; and we are compelled, ever and 
again, to eat and swallow and disgorge our own writings in the 
' yellow and blue.' We had plunged beneath the Stygian waters, 
when you arrived at the shore, to escape the vitriolic shower, and 
now again it comes, it comes, oh ! most miserable of wretches we, 
to bite and burn and torment us. 



XXVIII. 

" And lo ! as the wretch spoke, I saw a mist gather above their 
heads, and a thick rain fell. I saw each drop alighting on their 
bald scalps, and burning a hideous blister there, until their faces 
ran with blood and fire, and they flung with their hands the inky 
fluid on their heads to cool the burning torments which they suf- 
fered ; and then plunged in the slimy waters, and disappeared. 
And always the sad voice of the dreary poet droned out its clang- 
ing discord ; and added dreariness of sound to misery of sight in 
that most unhappy place. Presently the one that interpreted the 
doleful plight of the other wretched souls, emerged from the 
slimy blackness ; and wiping away the filth and blood from face 
and eyes, he said in a voice broken by despair, But, alas ! the worst 
remains to be told. We could bear the fire and the foul blackness 
of this abominable pit ; for we are a philosophic race, nurtured on 
a little oatmeal, and one gets inured to everything by habit. But, 
alas ! (and here his voice rose to a wail) we are also condemned to 
endure for ever the torture of seeing him who was our victim in 
the flesh, and of listening to his bad verses throughout eternity. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 173 

This is the most maddening of our sufferings ; and vainly do we 
invoke Death, the friend of men, to liberate us. Will ye too listen 
and pity us ? And lo ! the dreary voice, like the howling of the 
wind at midnight, came over the shuddering and shrinking lake ; 
and my gentle guide turned and wept and said : Alas ! this is too 
much ! Hath it not been written : 

mediocribus esse poetis, 
Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae ? 

And I, too, weeping turned away ; and echoing the dreadful 
horror, I wrote of that sad poet, as of Cerberus : — 

Grama gli spirti, gli scuoia, ed isquarta." 2 

XXIX. 

There is more of that subtle music, that carries sense through 
sound, in that last line than in any poetry outside of Homer. 
There are more onomatopoeic lines in the latter ; but for sheer 
and savage mercilessness, that line stands unmatched. What a 
ferocious old Beresark he was ! How he plunges the spurs of 
his anger into the flanks of his enemies ! If it be true that he 
took his design for the Divina Commedia from St. Patrick's Pur- 
gatory in Lough Derg, may it not also be true that he imitated 
the semi-pagan, wholly anti-Christian ferocity of the Irish bards, 
who exalted their friends to the heaven of heavens and smote 
their enemies even unto hell ? How could he that wrote that 
awful line quoted above, and the wail of trumpets hardened into 
stone in the " Per me si va's," in Canto III ; and the thirty lines 
on Ugolino from Ed io sente downwards ; and the dread six on 
Francesca — how could he also have written the last stanzas of 
the Paradiso with their clear farsight into the blisses of eternity, 
and their superhuman chastity in thought and word ? And yet 
it is not hard to conceive it. It is these volcanic natures that 
pour out lava and scoriae upon doomed cities and individuals; 
and, at the same time create for watchers in far-off climes sun- 
sets, clothed in the colors of the Apocalypse — the despair of a 
Claude Lorraine or a Turner. 

2 He rends the spirits, flays, and quarters them. Inferno, Canto VI. 



174 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

XXX. 

I know nothing so melancholy as that cenotaph of Dante in 
the Church of San Marco in Florence. It is a perpetual act of 
contrition and humiliation on the part of that famous municipal- 
ity; or it is a feeble attempt to clasp the shadow of him whose 
ashes repose in Ravenna. One might condone the former senti- 
ment, and pity the latter. Yet, it is something to see a great 
people doing penance through the centuries for the crime of their 
forefathers. It is the old story of aggression and hate triumphant 
for the moment ; and then the Nemesis unsated, eternally dog- 
ging their footsteps. For this is the one supreme consolation — 
that injustice, no matter how powerful and supreme, has ever but 
a temporary and a transient triumph ; and that sooner or later the 
Fate comes hurrying on, veiled from head to foot, and stands silent 
by the side of the individual or the nation, never to be exorcised, 
never to be propitiated, until it has wrung out the last drop of 
retribution appointed by the unseen tribunal that judges the unit 
and the race. What would not the Florentines give to-day to 
erase two pages from their history — the flame-scorched page of 
the holocaust of their monk, and the letter of expatriation, which 
drove their poet to exile and death ! 

XXXI. 

Some fifty years after the great Florentine's death, there lived 
in an obscure street in Ravenna one of those artists in iron 
and brass, of which the towns in Italy then were full. You may 
see their handiwork still in cathedral gates, in the iron fretwork 
around a shrine, in the gratings around the Sacramental altars in 
episcopal churches ; and if you have not seen them, and enter- 
tain any lingering doubts, look up your Ruskin, and he will make 
you ashamed. These were the days when men worked slowly 
and devoutly, conscious that work was prayer, and that they were 
laboring for the centuries, and not for mere passing bread. We 
cannot do it now, for we toil in the workshops of Mammon ; and 
neither fames, nor fame, can give the inspiration of that mother of 
art, called faith. Well, this artist's name was Jacopo Secconi; 
and he had an only child, a daughter, whose name was Beatrice, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 175 

called after the great poet who had made his last home at Ra- 
venna. The old man, for he was now old, never tired of speaking 
to his child of the great exile ; and Bice never tired of question- 
ing her father about Beatrice, and the wonders of Purgatory and 
Heaven. Once a month, however, a dark shadow would fall upon 
their threshold ; a brother of Jacopo's, from Florence, who would 
come over to see his niece, for he loved her ; but she did not love 
him. For, after the midday meal, the conversation of the two 
brothers invariably turned upon Dante and Florence, and Dante 
and Ravenna. No matter how it commenced, it veered steadily 
around to the everlasting topic, and on that they held directly 
contradictory views. 

XXXII. 

The Florentine stoutly maintained that Dante was in Hell, 
and eternally damned. 

" You say here," he would say, pointing his long finger, and 
sweeping the whole of Ravenna in a circle, "Eccovi luamo che 
stato all Inferno ! I say : Eccovi tuomo che sta all Inferno ! " 

" Corpo di Bacco ! " the brother would exclaim, " you deserve 
to go thither yourself for such a saying. God couldn't send such 
a man to Hell. He could not give such a triumph to Satan ! " 

" Dante hath sent priests and bishops and cardinals there," 
the brother would reply. " He hath filled its gloomy caverns 
with his enemies. He was vengeful and unforgiving. There is 
no place for such in Heaven ! " 

" I saw him here in exile," replied Jacopo, "when you, good 
Florentines, drove him out. I saw him walking our streets, a 
grave, solitary man. My father used point him out, and say : 
' Look well, Jacopone, look well ! That's a face that men will 
worship to the end of time ! ' " 

" A bad, gloomy face, full of sourness and malice to God and 
man," the Florentine would reply. 

" Presence of the Devil ! No, no, no ! " cried Jacopo. " But 
a great, solemn, marble face, chiselled as with a point of fire. I 
mind it well. He used to pass our door, always looking forward 
and upward, his cloak slung around him, and the folded beret on 



176 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

his head. Men used kneel down and kiss the pavement where 
he had trod. God sent his angels and his Beatrice for him when 
he died." 



XXXIII. 

" Pah ! " would exclaim his brother. " That's a pious deceit. 
There are only ten commandments, brother mine; and one of 
these, the greatest : ' Thou shalt love ! ' Believe me, your Dante 
has read the Lasciate more than once since he died ! " 

"Then where could God put him?" shouted Jacopo. "Did 
He create another circle for him lower down ? No ! no ! God 
does not damn such souls as Dante's ! I allow you he may be 
in Purgatory for a short time, because we must all go thither for 
our sins and imperfections. But Dante damned ! All Heaven 
would cry out against it! " 

So the controversy would rage, month after month, and Bice 
would listen with wondering, tearful eyes. But she hated her 
uncle cordially, and would refuse to kiss him when he went away. 
And for days Jacopo would not be the same ; but he swung to his 
work in a moody, silent, abstracted way, and sometimes he would 
pause, and wipe the sweat from his brow, and say to himself: 

" Dante in Hell ! Yes, he was ! We all know that ; but he 
is not. I swear it. He is not ! " 

And he would bring down his hammer furiously upon the 
iron ; and Bice, cooking the midday meal, would tremble and cry. 

XXXIV. 

But in the cool evening, when her work was done, and father 
had had his supper, and was poring over the great black-letter 
pages of his great poet, Bice would steal down to the little church 
just around the corner, and pray long and earnestly. For she 
was a sweet, innocent child, and loved all things, but most of all 
God, as the Supreme Beauty. Then she prayed for the soul of 
her good mother, who was dead ; and lastly, she knelt before a 
favorite Madonna, and, remembering her father's words, she prayed 
long and earnestly for the dead poet. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 177 

"Abandoned and rejected in life," she said, " like all great 
souls, he must not be neglected in death. God may hear the 
prayers of a child for the mightiest soul He has made for centuries." 

And she always prayed in the poet's own words, for they were 
as familiar as her Pater Noster, or Ave Maria, as no evening ever 
went by but she had to repeat one of the great cantos for her 
father. And so she used to pray : 

Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio, 
Umile ed alta piii che creatura, 
Termine fisso d' eterno consiglio. 
La tua benignita non pur soccorre 

A chi domanda, ma molte fiate 

Liberamente al domandar precorre. 
In te misericordia, in te pietate, 

In te magnificenza, in te s'aduna 

Quantumque in creatura e di bontate. 
Or questi, che dall' infima lacuna 

Dell' universo infin qui ha vedute 

Le vite spiritali ad una ad una, 
Supplica a te, per grazia di virtute 

Tanto che possa con gli occhi levarsi 

Piu alto verso 1' ultima salute ; 
Ed io, che mai per mio veder non arsi 

Piu ch'io fo per lo suo, tutti i miei preghi 

Ti porgo, e prego, che non sieno scarsi ; 
Perche tu ogni nube gli disleghi 

Di sua mortalita, coi preghi tuoi 

Si che il sommo piacer gli si dispieghi. 

XXXV. 

Then, one soft summer evening, she fell asleep on the altar- 
steps immediately after her prayers ; and she had a dream. She 
saw a great sea in the dawn-light, just waking up in the morning 
breeze, and fluted in long gentle plaits, that caught the pink light 
from the burning East. And lo ! across the waters came a tiny 
boat, propelled neither by sail nor oar; and standing in the prow 
was a Soul, — the Soul of a Woman, resplendent as the sun, and 



178 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

glowing in its crystal transparency, for Bice saw the Morning Star 
through her vesture, as it lay low down in the horizon. And the 
boat and the Soul came towards the sleeping child, until the 
latter beckoned and said : 

" Come hither, O Child of Mercy, and enter with me. I have 
come for thee ! " 

And Bice said : " Who art thou ? " 

And the Soul answered : " I am the spirit of Beatrice. I have 
been sent for thee." 

And Bice answered : " I cannot go, for my father is old and 
feeble, and I may not leave him." 

And the Soul said : " It is imperative that thou come ; for 
thou alone holdest the keys of that place, where he, whom we 
love, is detained." 

XXXVI. 

And Bice entered ; and they passed out over the shining 
waters that trembled beneath them, until they came to a shore, 
horrid with beetling crags, which seemed to touch the sky, and 
beneath whose feet the sea swelled and made no sound. And 
they rode on the waves to the mouth of a gloomy cavern, vast 
and impenetrable, for the front was closed by a great iron gate, 
whose bars seemed red with fire, or the rust of eternity. And 
behind the bars was the figure of the great poet, wrapped in his 
gloomy mantle as of old, and looking out over the shining sea 
with that same look of settled gloom and despair which Bice knew 
so well. And the Soul said : 

" Go forward, and open the gate, and liberate our Beloved ! " 
But Bice wept, and said : " Alas ! How can I ? I am but a 
child, and the gate is heavy, and the task is grievous ! " 

XXXVII. 

But the Soul said : " Loose the keys at thy girdle, and go 
forward ! " 

And Bice found two keys at her cincture, and she loosed 
them. And one was marked " Charity," and it was of gold; and 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 179 

the other was of silver, and the word " Prayer " was stamped 
thereon. And going forward she fitted the former into the great 
rusty lock. The bolt shot backwards, but the gate would not 
yield. Then she fitted the silver key, and lo ! the great iron bar- 
rier swung back heavily. And entering, the child caught the 
poet's hand, and drew him forth. And the gate swung back 
with horrid clangor. And, entering the boat, the three sped for- 
ward rapidly towards the dawn, which is infinity, which is heaven. 
And the poet, placing his hand on the child's head, said sweetly 
and solemnly : 

" Thrice blessed art thou, thou second Beatrice ; for lo ! what 
my Beatrice accomplished but in vision, thou hast verily 
wrought ! " 

" How now ? how now ? giovanetta mia ! " said the aged 
sacristan, as he rattled his keys above the sleeping child. " What 
a strange couch hast thou chosen ! But sleep comes lightly to the 
young. Surge / filia ! benedicamus Domino ! " he shouted. 

He bent low and raised the face of the sleeping child. 

" Jesu ! Maria ! but she is dead ! " 

XXXVIII. 

Even a philosopher cannot resist the temptation to sacrifice 
truth to an epigram. Even the mystical Schelling, perhaps 
because he was so mystical, could not resist the temptation. 
The reign of dogma, he says, that is, the religion of St. Peter, 
lasted up to the period of the German Reformation ; the reign of 
grace, the religion of St. Paul, has continued from that time until 
now. Both are now superseded, and the time has come for the 
reign of Love, the religion of St. John. The first two clauses of 
the epigram are absurd and untrue. We wish we could say the 
reverse of the last ; but the time has not come. And, alas ! the 
three clauses of the proposition are mutually contradictory and, 
therefore, unacceptable. If it were true that dogma had disap- 
peared (the hope of all modern agnosticism), charity should 
disappear with it ; for all charity is founded on dogma — the 
sublime one that charity is charity, because God has ordained it 



180 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

amongst men, as a reflection of His own perfection. So, too, if 
grace disappeared, charity would likewise vanish ; for it is not by 
Nature, which is rapine, we love ; but by grace, which compels 
Nature into its own sweet ways, and files its teeth and claws. But 
it will be a great day for Humanity, when from pole to pole, and 
from zone to zone, the great brotherhood, and not the common 
brutehood of the race is proclaimed ; and all the world's weapons 
of war are piled at the foot of the Cross, never again to be as- 
sumed for aggression or defence ; for the former will be unknown 
and the latter unnecessary. 

XXXIX. 

All the world's great thinkers have been dreaming of this 
millennium of love. Philosophers have defined what it shall be. 
Its foundation, its internal economy, its laws and institutions, its 
administration and executive — they have arranged all, there in 
their studies and laboratories. Every ethical system framed by 
great thinkers, from Aristotle to Spinoza, from Spinoza to Her- 
bert Spencer, is constructed with a view to the establishment of 
this Republic of Mankind. Poets dream of it, limn all its beauti- 
ful features, chant its triumphs. Shelley visioned it as built 
upon cloud foundations, with walls of jasper, and ceilings of sap- 
phire, and floors of chalcedony. Tennyson dreamed it more 
prosaically : 

" When the war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled 
In the Parliament of men, the Federation of the World. ' ' 

Political economists strain their eyes towards the far vision, and 
every theory, Malthusian and other, is directed towards its final 
fulfilment. Philanthropists and Christian Socialists build this 
commonwealth in miniature ; and " Brook Farms " and Mormon 
settlements are the temporary embodiments of this idea that is 
haunting humanity. Meanwhile the world wags on as usual. 
There is the same inequality in life's conditions, the same chasm 
between the rich and the poor, only ever deepening and ever widen- 
ing in the process of the suns ; the same poverty and squalor, the 
same disease and crime. And the battle-drums are rolling, and 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. l8l 

the rifles are barking as of yore. But the battle-flags are furled, 
not in the sleep of peace ; but the all-grasping belligerent races, 
whilst coveting everything, have grown economical — in silk and 
honor ! 

XL. 

And yet the solution of the problem, the realization of the 
dream, lie beneath men's hands, if men's eyes could only see 
them. But, as a sick man will have recourse to every kind of 
quackery, but refuse legitimate and certain remedies, so this civ- 
ilization of ours, sick unto death, swallows every nostrum of char- 
latanry, and rejects the one infallible remedy. That remedy could 
never have been discovered by men. It is the revelation of God. 
It lies in the voluntary sacrifice of the individual for the 'sake of 
the community ; in the sacrifice of the class for the welfare of a 
nation ; in the sacrifice of the nation for the benefit of a race ; in 
the sacrifice of a race for the welfare of mankind. But so long as 
the individual is self-seeking, and the nations strain for self-aggran- 
dizement ; and man's life is not a labor according to the primal 
curse, which is its eternal blessing, but a warfare, with the victory 
to the strongest ; so long will the evolution of the race go forward, 
not towards final perfection, evolution from the survival of the fit- 
test, but towards final destruction with the elimination of all that 
is sweetest and most beautiful. And yet, in its fiercest and most 
aggressive spirit, the world would hardly choose to go back to 
Beresarks and Vikings, to Alarics and Attilas ! Yet, thither- 
wards most surely it is tending, in that neo-heathenism which 
sings the soft hymns of Christianity whilst pursuing its pagan 
career of conquest and aggression. 



XLI. 

But here comes in the complex question : Can the really 
humble rule ? And must there not be the pride of strength in 
those who are called to govern ? The question concerns individ- 
uals, limited communities, whole nations. Is humility, self-efface- 
ment, a qualification for the father of a family, the superior of a 



182 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

religious house, the captain of a great army, the premier of a 
world-ruling parliament? If it is, there seems to be no power of 
ruling, which means the enforcement of one's own will on the will 
of others. A family, a community, a commonwealth, without a 
strong, self-reliant hand to guide it, lapses into anarchy. On the 
other hand, how can humility consist with the absolute exercise 
of unlimited power ? The problem may be put in other terms. We 
have seen how the world, and our lower nature, worship strength, 
even brute strength. We all admire the famous Abbot Sampson, 
who reduced an unruly community to order, defied a king, in- 
sisted on the rights of his order, braved force from without and 
rebellion from within. In our own days, the same hand that canon- 
ized Abbot Sampson deified Oliver Cromwell. Yet, if ever there 
was a brute, it was this latter adventurer. Say what we like, the 
vast majority of mankind worship brute force. " We like a strong 
man," is the cry of every one. But it is the cry of a low nature, 
still akin to the brute and the serpent ; or it is the norm and 
standard demand of an advanced and perfected civilization. 



XLII. 

On the other hand, gentle, refined natures love simple and 
lowly lives, and humble and pleading actions. That sentence in 
the " Sentimental Journey," in which Sterne depicts his own feel- 
ings, when the shamed Franciscan monk turned away and looked 
down at his brown, threadbare sleeve, finds a responsive echo in 
all human hearts. The characters in the novels of that great 
dramatist, Dickens, which appeal most to our sympathy and love, 
are such humble beings as Tom Pinch, and Little Nell, and Little 
Dorrit, and Florence Dombey, and Peggotty, etc. Ah, yes ! but 
that is fiction. Precisely. But if we met these gentle, pleading 
beings in real life, would we feel similarly towards them ? Yes, if 
we were like them, not otherwise. If we were simple, and lowly, 
and gentle, we would love them in flesh and blood, as well as we 
love their spectral forms in literature. But if we were base and 
ignoble, if we worshipped strength and distinction, we would 
despise them heartily as beneath us. Why? Because, in the 
solitude of our rooms we have no eye of public opinion upon us 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 83 

to rebuke us for our weakness in loving the weak. But, with the 
Argus eyes of society upon us, it would be a grave test of our 
integrity to walk a crowded street with the ragged companion of 
our school-days ; or to stand up in a heated ball-room with the 
homely rustic, and face a hundred eyes of criticism and contempt. 



XLIII. 

But the really humble can rule, and can rule with firmness 
and success, if unaggressive. There is a world of difference be- 
tween strength and aggression, between power and the pride of 
power. It is the sheathed strength, that underlies all real humility, 
which we worship. And it will invariably be found that those 
meek, yielding characters, who never assert themselves, who will- 
ingly efface themselves, exhibit the fortitude of endurance and the 
swiftness of strong resource, when in crises of life and death, great 
personal or state emergencies, such qualities of mind and soul are 
demanded by the exigencies of the weak, or the panic of the pre- 
tentious and the boastful. And, if raised to power by the suffrages 
of subjects, or the command of some higher authority, they in- 
variably develop unsuspected resources of spiritual strength and 
agility ; whilst their sense of humility and self-nothingness pre- 
vents them from infringing on the rights of the weak. They can 
be imperative without being aggressive. They can guide without 
hurting. They can stretch forth the shepherd's crook and lead 
into line the vagrant and the self-willed without plucking one 
wisp of wool or forcing one pitiful bleat. And they are content to 
govern and guide their own without throwing covetous eyes on 
alien property ; or seeking in some reflex axiom, which is generally 
an unacknowledged sophism, an excuse for conquest or aggression. 



XLIV. 

Indeed, if we look close, we shall find that it is the Omnipo- 
tence of Christ, even more than His Mercy, that enchained the 
multitude and kept close to Him His most capricious disciples. 
"Show us a sign," was the cry of the curious and selfish mob. If 



1 84 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

our Lord had merely preached, He would have left no converts. 
If He had wrought miracles without having preached, He would 
have bequeathed to us no Gospel. It is His power that prevails. 
" He hath done all things well." It is His positive, dogmatic, 
assertive teaching that convinces. " Surely man never spake like 
this Man." The multitude wondered and worshipped. The chosen 
ones worshipped and loved. And we, in the far-off times, we, too, 
are entrained amongst His worshippers and lovers, because we 
feel that here is Omnipotence ; and that when all things else are 
as fragile as a broken reed, we can fall back upon and lean our 
weakness on the unyielding strength of Jesus Christ. And this 
awful commanding power was so unaggressive. He smote no one 
— He coveted nothing. " Put up thy sword." It is the Meek and 
the Lowly One, who holds in leash the elements of invincible 
might, that commands that instinct of admiration, which as well 
as pity is the first condition of love. 

XLV. 

And yet, while we wonder at and worship His invincible power, 
it is the consciousness of its possession, rather than its arbitrary 
exercise, that demands our admiration. It is the reticence in 
speech, and the restraint in action, that we adore. And this ex- 
quisite self-balancing, this absence of all passion, the submission 
to calmness and reason, under the greatest provocation, were 
manifested towards His brethren more conspicuously than towards 
His Jewish enemies. 

I know nothing more pathetic than that sentence of the Evan- 
gelist : " He rebuked their incredulity." When ? Just as He was 
about to ascend into Heaven. Incredulity at such a moment, and 
after such experience ! 

Alas ! yes. They had seen Him put forth proof after proof 
of His Divinity in His many and marvellous miracles ; they had 
seen the wonder of His Death, and the splendors of His Resur- 
rection ; they had marvelled at His divine equanimity, and it is 
not difficult to imagine their looks of bewildered admiration, curi- 
osity, and doubt, as they saw to-day proofs of His Godhead, and 
to-morrow evidences of His Manhood ; He had appeared to them 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 185 

again and again after His Resurrection, spoken to them, eaten 
with them, to prove He was no spirit. And yet, weak and in- 
credulous to the last moment, they stared at Him, there on the 
hillside of Olivet, with mute, blank, unintelligent wonder, until He 
was obliged to repeat that old formula of His pity and sorrow, 
" stidti et tardi corde ! Quousque ! Quousque? " He rebuked 
their incredulity ; and then — a cloud hid Him from their sight. 

XLVI. 

Paganism conquered by aggression. Christianity conquers 
by submission, and her victories are more lasting. Attila and 
Leo; Gregory and Henry; Napoleon and Pius VII; Bismarck 
and Pius IX. What mighty duellists they were ; and how the 
feeble priests, in the end, by the might that is from above, pre- 
vailed over the mail-clad warriors, with their legions behind them. 
Yes ! the end is always certain : victory is to the j ust. But what 
almost infinite patience is required to watch for that end, and to 
be satisfied with the fruition of victory ! For one naturally argues : 
Can victory give back all that we have lost by being unj ustly as- 
sailed ? Can it recompense us for the weary suspense, the sleep- 
less anxiety, the bruised feelings, the ignominy, the shame, the 
sorrow? And, on the other hand, will a mere black mark in the 
judgment-roll of History be accounted sufficient retribution for 
pride, injustice, and aggression? Doth not the whole man arise 
in protest against wrong ? And is there not something fiercer in 
the human heart in its revolt against injustice than the plaintive 
wail of the exiled Pontiff: " I have loved justice, and hated in- 
iquity ; therefore I die in exile " ? 

XLVII. 

Human nature is unchangeable ; and to-day there are few who 
have been in contact with men, that do not suffer an almost irre- 
sistible temptation to despise them. The law of rapine, which is 
self, so predominates amongst them; their little souls are held in 
leash by so fragile a tenement ; their time is so short ; and they 
play their wretched little parts so badly, that one is tempted to 



186 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

hiss the whole company from the stage forever. Human history- 
is but a record of human weakness and brutality. The Cross has 
been planted in the Coliseum ; but the evil spirits that lashed with 
lust and fury the sixty thousand spectators, who seemed to drink 
with their eyes the blood of their victims, have sought better- 
swept and cleaner places. But they are by no means exorcised 
or banished from the earth. Let the battlefields of the world, the 
cries of the oppressed, paeans of the victors, the broken hearts, the 
wrecked lives, testify to it. What then ? Are we to grow impa- 
tient with these little minnies ? Are we to dream of a greater and 
stronger and more spiritual race than we behold on our planet ? 
Perhaps so ! Yet it would be better to restrain our judgments, 
and imitate " the soft yearnings of infinite pity," conscious that 
the key to the mystery of so much meanness and so much weak- 
ness is somewhere. " Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner ! " 

XLVIII. 

It is this divine resemblance to the toleration of His Father, 
this reflex of divine magnanimity that should put all question of 
our Lord's Divinity quite outside the pale of controversy. He 
was amongst men, but not of them. Their querulousness, their 
jealousy, their doubts, their powerlessness to lift themselves above 
the merely human are perpetuated in human lives to this day; 
and are not the characteristics of any race or nation, but are 
the common and universal inheritance of all. Yet, how calmly 
God looks down not only upon this provoking meanness and 
littleness, but even more, upon the mighty mass of iniquity 
that seethes in great cities and in country hamlets, and steams 
up a sickening holocaust before His throne ! And how infinite 
is His toleration and even benevolence in view of such ingrati- 
tude, for His times and seasons revolve as if earth were an altar 
of sweet-smelling sacrifice, and His sun shines, and His dews fall 
alike on the saint and sinner ! Behold the patience and love of 
our Lord reflected in the larger operations of His Father ! No 
wonder that men should say : He hath done all things well ! No 
wonder that the lonely prisoner in St. Helena, once the Impera- 
tor and world Caesar, should exclaim : " I know men well ; and I 
say that Jesus Christ was not a man ! " 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 87 

XLIX. 

On passing to and from the schools these spring days, I saw 
a strange and pathetic sight. Our Irish boys are passionately 
fond of birds and dogs ; and beneath the thatched eaves of the 
simple cabins you may count by the dozen goldfinches and lin- 
nets, seemingly happy in their captivity, as they jump from perch 
to perch and thrill out their little melodies. Occasionally, some 
more ambitious youngster, generally a shoemaker, has a large 
wicker cage outside his door, where a brown thrush, or a red- 
beaked blackbird wakens up the whole neighborhood these lovely 
mornings with his melody. " He's as good as the chapel-bell, 
to call people to Mass," says an old woman, admiringly. But 
in one cage was a solitary prisoner, and he was mute. Crouched 
in a corner of his prison on a sod of grass, which was once wet 
and dewy and sweet, but is now dry and sodden, he sat in one 
posture day by day, silent, dreaming, miserable, with his large, 
beaded, black eyes steadily gazing upwards to the sky. It was a 
picture of misery that nothing could extenuate or relieve. He 
could not be frightened. You might touch him, and he would 
not move or flutter aside. He took no notice of the lesser souls 
in the adjoining cages, who hugged their captivity, and sang their 
little songs of Sion for their masters. He felt his chains galling 
him, and the thoughts of freedom maddened him. It was a cap- 
tive lark. 

L. 

His thoughts were as readable as print. You could see of 
what he was dreaming — the dewy meadow, the deep, round, 
warm nest, the fragrant cowslip bending over it, the sweet-scented 
hay all around, the daisy and the harebell, and the long lush 
grass, and jets of matin song springing up all around him, and far 
up in the sky, as if Mother Nature from her teeming breasts sent 
up fountain after fountain of musical spray, and seemed to bathe 
the clouds with melody. And the light of morning and the 
awakening, the first spring upwards into the cool, clean air, the 
beating and fluttering of wings, and then the clear carol, growing 
in shrillness and varied cadences every moment as the exuberance 



188 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of life intoxicated him and he felt new pulsations as of an eman- 
cipated spirit, as he mounted higher and higher towards the in- 
finite azure, till he was lost in a cloud and his song was extin- 
guished for a moment, only to be revived as he approached earth 
again, and saw far beneath him his little home, and carolled to 
his brown mate or the little ones whose yellow beaks opened 
towards the Hand that feeds all His creation; and then one 
sudden plunge sideways, lest evil eyes should discover his little 
home in the universe, and a final creep back to home and warmth 
and the life of little loves and cares again ! And here, ah, yes ! 
here were the wicker bars, as stout against freedom as if they 
were iron ; and there is the narrow roof above him ; and here 
beneath is the mockery of meadow-grass and flowers, and fra- 
grance, and freedom, and delight ! 

LI. 

It was too bad ! I watched him three mornings in succession, 
and then determined to give him his liberty. 

" Why doesn't the lark sing? " I said to the young barbarian 
who had captured him. 

" He isn't used to the cage a-yet," he replied. 

" And will he sing when he gets used to it ? " I asked. 

" He will," said the captor. 

" What's the use of that dry sod ? " I said. 

" He thinks 'tis his nist," said he. 

" I'm going to liberate that bird," I said. He set up a pillalu, 
which is a fair equivalent for the most dismal howl that ever 
emanated from human lips. 

" Never mind, I'll pay you," I said. " Bring that cage and bird 
down to my garden at once." 

He did so reluctantly and wonderingly. We placed the cage 
in the midst of the flower-plots. The lark woke up to a new life. 
I opened the wicker gate and stood aside. The poor little prisoner 
gazed at the avenue to freedom, incredulously it seemed, for he 
appeared reluctant to take advantage of it. Then tentatively he 
hopped on to the threshold of his prison, looked dubiously around. 
Then, with one swift flutter of his wings, he shot like a meteor 
over my garden wall. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 1 89 

" He's gone," said the boy, as if he doubted his senses. 

" Yes," I said. " How would you like to be in gaol ? " The 
thought never struck him before, for he appeared ashamed of 
himself. He took up the cage dubiously, and, as if conscious that 
he had no right to a reward, but rather to a whipping, he was 
going away in a repentant mood. I called him back. 

" You haven't waited for your money ? " I said. He was silent, 
I handed him a half-crown. It broke the spell of repentance. 
I saw him put it deep down in his pocket and hold it fast there, 
with one hand, whilst he swung the empty cage in the other. 
Then he winked with his right eye at some imaginary individual, 
and then with his left. 

" Look here ! " I cried. 

He became suddenly demure and impassive. " If ever again 
you capture and imprison a skylark, I'll take the half-crown's 
worth of licking out of you. Do you understand?" 

He said he did, and I believed him. 



LII. 

Then I gave myself up to thinking and dreaming of what the 
poor bird felt on his release from captivity. I knew that for the rest 
of the evening he would be so dazed with his sudden recovery of 
liberty that he could neither sing, nor fly, nor even seek his food ; 
but would hide deep down in the young grass, and think and 
ponder and wonder if it were true. But next morning, ah me ! 
the first shock of waking in the belief that he was yet in captivity ; 
the disbelief in his priceless privilege of freedom ; the fear of using 
his wings lest he should dash himself against his prison walls ; the 
sudden rush of emotion on finding that he was free ; the little ten- 
tative flights, to prove the new privilege ; the momentary jealousy 
of his mates, as they sprang upwards in the morning sunlight ; 
and then one swift, exultant spring into the air ; the palpitation of 
his wings, as they struck madly for strength to mount into the 
empyrean ; one or two little chirruped prologues ; and then a 
great stream of exultant melody, as he mounts higher and higher 
into the blue dome above him, and earth recedes beneath ; and 
up, up, up into the white bosom of a cloud, till he becomes a 



190 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

" sightless song," and is intoxicated with the raptures of life and 
love and freedom. And then the slower return homeward, down, 
down, still making melodious music from his overflowing heart, 
and closing the little matin programme with a silver tremblo, as 
he looks eagerly around for his little bed in the lush grass, and 
hovers and sinks at last into his new life of freedom, and happiness, 
and love ! 



LIU. 

It is a wonderful thing — that same freedom, or, to use a more 
classical term — Liberty. It is always first in the programme of 
existent or aspiring nationalities. Poets have hymned it, orators 
glorified it, artists embodied it, as the right indefeasible, the privi- 
lege inadmissible, of humanity. And yet, between liberty and 
tyranny, how thin the dividing line ! How easily the divine and 
the daemonic merge in each other ! How swiftly the Phrygian 
cap passes under the guillotine, and the pikes of Liberty are ham- 
mered into the sword of conquest and aggression ! No ! There are 
but two classes of humanity — the aggressors and the aggressed ! 
The slave of to-day becomes the tyrant of to-morrow. Poor 
Rouget de Lisle ! 

* ' Liberte, Liberte, cherie, 
Combats avec tes defenseurs. ' ' 

The goddess came at his beck, and almost led him to the scaffold. 
And the defenders of Freedom became destroyers of Freedom 
from end to end of Europe. The fact is, there is no such deity 
as Liberty. It is a dream of the race, especially of poets and 
humanitarians. So long as human nature remains what it is, the 
weak will be oppressed by the strong, and the cries of a Poland, 
or an Ireland, will sound in the ears of a conquering world, as the 
cracking of bones and the moans of victims beneath the artillery 
wagons of Napoleon were lost in the ears of the ribboned Con- 
queror, who only heard the Vive r Empereur ! of his own dying 
veterans. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 19* 

LIV. 

Individual liberties, too, scarcely exist in the most professedly 
independent state. Every man has a hundred masters. The laws 
of his country hedge him around on every side ; and these laws 
are very often oppressive and unjust. The employment or pro- 
fession in which he is engaged has a hundred restrictions on his 
freedom. The circle of society in which he moves draws its 
silent and tacit legislation around him, ever fretting him into mute 
and servile obedience ; the press frames his opinion for him, and 
he bows like a slave to its behests ; his family ties bind him with 
withes of straw that are strong as iron fetters ; his actions are 
controlled by his doctor, his agent, his broker, his wife, his child ; 
his tongue is governed by all the minute and silent legislation 
that regulates the " minor moralities " of life ; his very dress is 
ordered according to an imperative fashion ; his gait is guided by 
law ; his speech must be attuned to regulations, as arbitrary 
as they are absurd ; and the only sensation of freedom he ever 
feels is when down by the seaside for a week or two of emancipa- 
tion from the treadmills of life he flings himself in his shirt-sleeves 
upon the heather above the sea, stretches his arms, and cries 
Heigh-ho ! lights a cigar, and declares in the teeth of an angry 
civilization that he will be a boy for at least one hour of his 
weary life ! 

LV. 

Do you remember who was that fine poet — and, if I mistake 
not, he was a great one, too — who used to fly from the tyranny of 
civilization once a year to the remotest seaside village in Corn- 
wall and there abandon himself to absolute, unrestricted freedom ? 
I remember how it struck me — his delightful habit before bathing, 
of burying himself deep in the warm sand and remaining in that 
gritty bath for an hour or so, and then plunging into the cool 
breakers and taking his douche after the improvised Turkish — 
primitive, unrestricted, free. No handing up of watches and coins to 
the proprietor ; no turning in on the burning tiles ; no cadaverous 
or swollen humanities around you ; no masseur to pound you into 
jelly. But Nature ! dear old mother and nurse, combining all in her 



192 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

own dear old self, and doing her work without fee or reward. But 
I think he said it was the sense of absolute freedom that made the 
experience an ecstasy — the thought that there was no one within 
miles of you, that the Sunday tripper had never come hither, that 
there were no bands, no Christy Minstrels, no Pierrots or Pier- 
rottes, no stripping and dressing ten times a day ; and, above all, 
no staring, wondering, insolent eye to gauge and measure you, 
but the blue eye of heaven, and the " unnumbered laughter " of 
the deep, and all the wild, free, savage, beautiful things that haunt 
solitude, and flee from civilization. 

LVI. 

I can thoroughly sympathize with Henry Thoreau ; and I 
cannot think he was a madman. Emerson believed in him, and 
that counts for much. But I can easily understand his raptures in 
the loneliness of his lake-home, just as I can easily understand 
the delights that thronged around the daily lives of the great 
hermits or caenobites of old. In fact, all great souls love soli- 
tude ; and if old Burton does warn us against it, mark, he puts 
solitude and idleness together, and they are by no means essen- 
tial companions. Just as Emerson found that the best place for 
lonely, uninterrupted work was a front chamber in a New York 
hotel, so it may be that a solitary life would have great cares and 
great labors, although apparently free from the ordinary distrac- 
tions of humanity. But it may be a question whether the abso- 
lute freedom of the desert is a fair exchange for the more con- 
venient tyranny of civilization. Yes ! Rousseau won't do ! We 
cannot go back to barbarism. If there be one thing more certain 
than another it is that we cannot put back the hand on the dial. 
Last evening, I was telling an old priest how I had sped to Dub- 
lin the week before — 144 miles in three hours. "I remember 
well," he said, " when it took me three days ; and on the outside 
of a coach, in winter, travelling night and day, with bad meals, and 
many stops. It was not pleasant." " But," I said, " you were all 
the better and happier for the experience. You were a strong 
generation, and could call on Nature freely. We are weaklings " 
— He looked at me in such a way that I did not pursue the 
subject. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 193 

LVII. 

What a singular thing it is, that the world's greatest literature 
is tinged with melancholy ! All deep thought is sombre thought. 
Sadness is the handmaiden of philosophy. What a low, sad wail 
seems to moan all through the historical books and psalms of the 
Old Testament, until it culminates in the woes and desolation of 
Isaias, when " Moab shall howl to Moab," and " I will lament with 
the weeping of Iazer the vineyard of Sabama; and water thee with 
my tears, O Hesebon, and Eleale ! " And then, at its culmination, 
it passes on to the terrors of Ezechiel, and the threnodies of Jere- 
mias ; and seems to die away in the burden of the weeping of the 
wind in the minor prophecies of Amos and Aggaeus. And even 
in the New Testament, the testament of love and mercy, the same 
sadness predominates. The thunders of John the Baptist, fresh 
from the deserts of Bashan, subside to the " soft wailings of infinite 
pity" of Him of whom he was Precursor and Prophet; until 
they, too, grow and swell into that terrible crescendo that startled 
the darkness of Golgotha, and broke into the final cry of desola- 
tion : " Eloi, Eloi, lamma Sabacthani ! " So, too, in the Epistles 
of St. Paul, if we meet here and there with a " Gaudete, item dico, 
gaudete ! " somehow or other, it seems forced by the pity and 
charity of the great saint for his followers. The truer expression 
of his habitual sentiments would be : " Capio dissolvi, et esse cum 
Christo ! " 

LVIII. 

The Homeric ballads, too, commence with a tragedy, and 
seem to ring with defeat. Brj S'afcecov moves on to that strange 
line : 

At fiev ere %(dbv yoov 'E/CTO/aa <p ivl ol/co)' 

Again, all the great Greek drama is tragical with its eternal lesson 
of Nemesis dogging the feet of crime. The grinning face of Aris- 
tophanes seems as much out of place in Grecian literature as that 
of a mimic in a house of mourning. The more modern Virgilian 
verse, too, sweeps on in a great dark torrent, with Sybils and 
Parcae here and there, foretelling or compassing the ruin of nations 



194 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

and individuals ; and the lighter poets, such as Horace or Catul- 
lus, drift into the same melancholy the moment they take the 
bowl from their lips, and commence to philosophize. What shall 
we say of the melancholy of Dante and Milton ; of the genius of 
Shakspere best manifested in such successions of horrors as are 
depicted in Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear ? How the 
same note obtains in all the pages of Tennyson, and permeates 
all the poetry of that truest interpreter of the modern infelicity 
and weariness of life :-— 

And then we suffer ; and amongst us one, 
Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly 
His seat upon the intellectual throne ; 
And all his store of sad experience he 

Lays bare of wretched days ; 
Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, 
And how the dying spark of hope was fed, 
And how the breast was soothed, how the head, 
And all his hourly varied anodynes. 



LIX. 

There was some meaning, then, in that half-comical remark 
of his cheerful friend to the melancholy Johnson : " You are a 
philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried, too, in my time, to be a 
philosopher ; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always 
breaking in." That's just it ! Cheerfulness and philosophy won't 
go hand in hand. The moment you think, you begin to sink ; 
just as a swimmer afloat on the surface of the water has to struggle 
to save himself from sinking, if he attempts to draw the least 
breath. " The weight and burden of all this unintelligible world " 
is too much for us. We can only bear it by not thinking of it. 
Just as physical agony is not only tolerable, but actually forgotten, 
the moment the mind is abstracted by sleep, or greater absorption, 
or an anaesthetic ; so, if life is to be happy and pleasurable, we 
must cease to view it too closely, or to watch too minutely the 
ticking away of time, or the varied pulsations of everyday experi- 
ence. Of course, there is a class set apart for these things — those 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 195 

" intellectually throned " ; they must suffer, but probably they have 
their reward. For ordinary mortals, it is wisest to face the little 
drama of each day with hopeful hearts, perform its duties, enjoy 
its pleasures, suffer its trials ; and place the sum-total at the feet 
of Him who is the dramatic Censor of all the alternate tragedy 
and comedy into which life is divided. 



LX. 

It has been said, too, that the reading of a great book has a 
tendency to make the reader gloomy and despondent. Probably 
it puts so high an ideal before him that he becomes quite discon- 
tented with the humdrum existence around him, and passes gradu- 
ally from a first feeling of discontent to one of self-contempt, and 
a grave undervaluing of all that he had esteemed in others. It is 
a grave disturbance of homely, happy thoughts and customs that 
were pursued with a certain feeling of satisfaction that there was 
no obligation to reach higher. There is, of course, a certain 
exhilaration in feeling that we have seized on higher possibilities, 
and lighted ourselves to a higher plane. But then we bid good- 
bye to the pleasant valleys beneath us, where in humble associ- 
ations and with very commonplace views of life we had managed 
to jog along pleasantly through the greater part of life. Here, too, 
are there compensation and loss, the eternal interchange between 
the positive and negative forces of life. For high thought we have 
to sacrifice lowly pleasures ; for exaltation of mind we have to 
yield up content ; and whether the exchange is to our profit we 
shall never determine. But we must go on ; there is no halting, 
unless we wish to be crushed or pushed aside, or be faithless to 
our vocation. 

LXI. 

We had a big fire, last night. Something mysterious woke me 
up from a deep sleep just as the clock was chiming midnight. It 
was some time before I could gather my thoughts together. Then 
I noticed a curious light, palpitating against the blind of my 
northern window. I thought it was the moon, but instantly 



196 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

remembered that the moon never appears in the northern hori- 
zon, and that the moon shines steadily, and not with this pulsating 
light. I rose up, and raised the blind. Across the river, and not 
two hundred yards away, the mill, a vast building, six stories 
high, built as a flour mill, years before American competition 
drove Irish flour even from Irish markets, was on fire. Every 
coign and crevice was caught in the flames, which leaped through 
its seventy windows and reared themselves thirty feet above the 
roof. I could feel the heat in my bedroom, but could not hear 
a sound. The wind blew from the east, and carried the roar 
of the conflagration far out to the west, and over the river and 
beyond the trees. Not a soul was stirring, although the single 
street was lighted as if by a hundred electric arcs. The very 
dogs, which never cease barking on ordinary nights, were silent. 
I was anxious for my stables, and when I found these were safe, 
I roused the village. It was no easy task. They slept the sleep 
of innocence and exhaustion. Then they grew alarmed, and no 
wonder, for half the village is thatched, and nothing could have 
saved it if the wind blew from the north or west. 



LXII. 

As it was, there was but one building imperilled, and that was 
the Convent, which lay right in the track of the burning debris 
that was flung high in the air from the seething cauldron beneath, 
and was then caught by the wind, and carried hundreds of yards 
in a westerly direction. We could see great flakes of fire falling 
on the Convent roofs, and lodging in the branches of the trees 
around. It seemed only a matter of minutes before the whole 
building would be wrapped in fire and smoke. There were plenty 
of willing hands to help, however; and, although they had to 
dodge the burning flakes of slate and timber that fell noiselessly 
upon the grass, they soon extinguished the burning fragments on 
roof and trees ; and, in a few minutes, all danger was over. I re- 
turned home; and, as there was no possibility of sleep with such 
a conflagration lighting up the heavens and the earth, I went up 
into my garden, and sat down, and watched the flowers under that 
light I should probably never see again. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 197 

LXIII. 

There was no color, but a kind of soft brown atmosphere over 
all. This was the reflection flung downwards from the heavy 
clouds overhead, which now were reddened as in a winter sunset, 
when the light falls lurid and glaring ; and the angry sky forebodes 
stormy weather. The shadows were deep and black ; but, in the 
open this strange color hung down over all the garden-beds and 
tinted hyacinth, tulip, and daffodil in the same monastic and uni- 
form tints. Then, early in that spring morning, I noticed for the 
first time the meekness of the flowers. It had never struck me 
before. Now, they looked like little children awakened from 
sleep under a sudden terror; and they seemed so helpless, so 
gentle, there whilst the horrors of the conflagration were round 
about them, and the roar and the flame were startling all the dark- 
ness of the night. I remained there till the faint Spring dawn lit 
up the eastern sky, and in a few moments dulled and almost ex- 
tinguished the splendors of the furnace that had now become a 
well of redhot metals and stones. Presently, the sun arose ; and 
all the flowers began to turn their gentle and wistful faces towards 
him. It was as the face of a mother bending over the cradle of 
children awakened in terror of the night. 

LXIV. 

I have often studied that curious aspect of gentleness and meek- 
ness in flowers of which I have made mention before. Here, 
and here alone, is the lie given direct to the poet : 

For Nature is one with rapine. 

Whatever be said of bird, beast, fish, or insect, of which it may 
perhaps be true that they subsist by plunder and violence, here is 
the great exception. A little water and a little air, and behold ! 
they perform their part in the universe of things ; and not an un- 
important part, if beauty and fragrance are essential ends in that 
great evolution that works upwards from the clod to the star. 
And not only are they unaggressive, but they are infinitely forbear- 
ing and long-suffering. Sky and earth and air combine against 



198 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

them ; and they suffer all meekly. The angry and wanton winds 
toss them to and fro ; the fierce whips of the rain lash them, till 
they droop their meek heads, and weep like chidden children ; the 
teeming earth sends up its little parasites, that heedless of beauty 
nestle beneath the loveliest leaf or stamen, and consume its vital- 
ity. There is no defence and no protest. It is as if an acid were 
flung on a panel by Angelico ; or a Murillo exposed to sun and 
rain. 

But no angry remonstrance arises from Man or Nature. The 
great mother is so prolific of her beauties, that no one heeds the 
prodigality and waste. 

LXV. 

It is true indeed that there are carnivorous plants beneath the 
tropics ; and upas-leaves of death beneath which the tiny animal 
creation, so destructive of flowers in temperate climates, suffer 
retributive justice from their victims. But then, everything is made 
fierce by that terrible tropical sun ; and the meekest things forego 
their natural inclinations beneath his maddening influences. It is 
also true, I am told by experts, that the most gentle-seeming 
flowers exhale a poisonous, miasmatic breath, so that their sisters 
droop beneath their aromatic, but treacherous breathing. But these 
are exceptions, proving that the fairest things may be the most 
deadly ; and that, as we so often read in the histories of men, 
death may lurk in the vintage of the Apennines, sparkling through 
Venetian crystal. But I only speak of what I know, and that is 
that flowers are the fairest and gentlest things the Hand of God 
hath fashioned from His elements of Nature ; and one would 
almost hope they had souls to be reborn forever in the sunlit 
valleys of Paradise. 

LXVI. 

One thing also I never realized before, — and that was the ter- 
rific beauty and loveliness of fire. Dealing with it in ordinary 
life, it is, I suppose, too much of a slave to us to command our 
admiration. It is only when it starts up and assumes the master- 
ship, that we recognize its majestic, if destructive power. It is as 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 199 

if a company of galley-slaves broke their bounds, and carried 
ruin and terror all along before them ; then fell down lifeless un- 
der the ruin they had made. But it is a mighty element — all the 
more to be dreaded, because it is latent, yet operative everywhere 
— nay, it is the great central energy which everywhere works 
through space. That blue jet of flame in my grate is lighted by 
the sun ; and it is diluted but real sun-force that lights this paper 
which I am just now darkening. The same mysterious power 
has bleached the linen in my sleeve, and browned the cuticle of 
my hand. It has cooked that meat before me, and enamelled the 
plate on which it lies. It built the temples of the gods in 
Persia, for itself was the deity worshipped ; and in the Irish val- 
leys it raised these dolmens and cromlechs that have withstood 
the storms of three thousand years. 

LXVII. 

But if you would like to trace this mighty element, not on 
the earth, where its footsteps are so deeply impressed ; but even 
in the Heaven of Heavens, and through even immaterial things, 
such as human thought and the soul of man, up through the tor- 
tuous paths of philosophy, and even to the throne of the Eternal, 
read that wonderful treatise of Bishop Berkeley's, which he 
quaintly calls Siris. Here he takes you from the exudations of 
the pine-tree to their latent energies ; from these to their source, 
the Sun ; thence to Light and Fire, real and symbolical ; thence 
to first principles of Being, to first objects of worship; thence to 
Chaldsean religions and Persian fire-temples ; or through Plato- 
nism to the Hebrew Prophecies and Psalms, where fire has always 
figured largely as symbol, as vesture, as metaphor ; thence, again, 
through Pagan adumbrations of the Trinity up to the great cen- 
tral mystery of Creation, until in the highest altitudes of thought, 
he suddenly remembers its origin, and goes back to the homely 
virtues of tar-water. 

LXVIII. 

Is there a more pathetic scene in literary biography than that 
which took place between Berkeley and Malebranche in the cell 



200 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

of the Oratorian in Paris ? The fine old priest, with his wonderful 
ideas about God, bending over the pipkin on the fire that held the 
decoction that was to cure the inflammation of the lungs from 
which he was suffering ; and the grave English philosopher, with 
his new idealism occupying every cranny and nook of his brain ! 
Malebranche could not accept such visionary notions as an 
explanation of the mystery of Being; and argued, reasoned, 
expostulated, whilst he stirred the medicine in the pipkin. His 
Gallic impetuosity was too much for him. Inflamed lungs will 
not stand much pressure even from philosophy. The phlegmatic 
Englishman hied him homeward to his country; the Oratorian 
was dead in a few days, martyred by his devotion to what he 
deemed truth. 

LXIX. 

Talking of this beneficent, and symbolical, and dread ele- 
ment, I came across a curious expression a few days ago. On 
turning over the leaves of certain autobiographies of famous per- 
sons, I saw that one of them gave, under the head of " Recrea- 
tions," the following : 

"Variation of occupation, playing- with fire',' etc. How did 
he amuse himself playing with fire ? Did he swallow live-hot 
coals, like a stage-conjuror, or put a lighted candle in his mouth, 
as we all did when we were boys, or was he an amateur pyro- 
technist, amusing himself in his back-garden on winter nights, and 
delighting all the small boys in his neighborhood ? I suspect 
there was a little affectation in this " playing with fire," as indeed 
there is in most autobiographies. I remember how affected I used 
be by Carlyle's letters to his wife, until I found she accused him 
of writing all these affectionate epistles with a view to their future 
publication, and for the edification of posterity. But I came 
across one little note, which was thoroughly naive and genuine ; 
and another which was pathetic. The former was written by a 
lady-authoress ; and a very distinguished one. Under the head 
of " Recreations," she mentions three things : Reading, writing, 
and — talking ! ' God bless her ! There's ( no nonsense there ! 
No "archaeological explorations," " Alpine climbing," " deciphering 
Assyrian inscriptions ; " but " talking," a plain, honest avowal of 
a harmless amusement. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 201 

LXX. 

I would give a good deal to be one of the circle around the 
tea-table of that lady, some winter night, when the wind was 
threatening the final cataclysm on all things outside, and the 
merry blazes were dancing up the chimney — you know the rest ! 
The ghost of Dickens rises up before me, with a raised forefinger. 
" I have said all that a thousand times better than you." God 
bless you, Charles ! So you have ; and made us all your debtors 
forever ! But let us suppose a Dickens' picture, and that good 
lady presiding ; and let us suppose that she has done the honors, 
and is now free — to talk. I can imagine myself listening in the 
shade of a great lamp, or under the shelter of a Grand piano — 
listening, listening, whilst the stream of calm, graceful eloquence 
rolled smoothly from that lady's lips. And, if I am to judge by 
her written language, it is no idle gossip either ; but gentle, liberal 
views on things and places and persons, that are very interesting ; 
of strange scenes she has visited abroad, of distinguished persons 
she has met, of rare intellectual tournaments between the giants 
of intellect of our own day ; and not a word to wound charity. 
For, where Intellect rules, Charity is always inviolate. 



LXXI. 

The pathos in these brief autobiographies came in thus : 
" Recreations : In former days, golfing and tennis, cycling and 
swimming." — Alas ! my poor friend, going down the slope of life, 
thou must now take things gently. Thou hast no longer the 
elasticity of spirit, nor the suppleness of limb, nor that elan y which 
helped thee in youth to despise consequences and rush at the 
immediate. That twinge in thy shoulder reminds thee that ten- 
nis-bats and golf-mallets cannot now be swung with impunity; 
and a fall from a cycle, in former days to be laughed at as a 
trifle, might mean something serious now. In fact, friend, thou 
hast passed under the ferule of that dread schoolmaster, experi- 
ence ; and his lessons there is no despising nor ignoring. Thou 
hast the heart of a boy, for I perceive there is a note of admiration, 
the admiration of regret, beneath that phrase informer days ; but 



202 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

thou hast the mind of a man, tutored and experienced by many a 
rough accident in the uphill struggle of life ; and thou art con- 
quered ! The splendid disdain of youth has vanished; thou hast 
learned to respect destiny ; and thou hast become cautious, and 
let us hope modest withal. 



LXXII. 

But is all this regrettable ? Certainly not. The best part of 
life is unquestionably its decline, just as the mellow autumn is the 
fruit-bearer and peace harbinger of the year. I cannot for a mo- 
ment envy these young athletes who sweep past my window here, 
flash across my vision for a moment and are gone. I feel glad of 
their courage, their splendid animal spirits, the exhilaration of 
youth and exercise, their enjoyment of the living present. But I 
do not envy them. I never go into a school-room without half 
wishing, like John Bright, to shed a tear over these young lives, 
with all the dread problems of life before them. Hence, too, I 
think we should pour into these young lives all the wine and oil 
of gladness we may, consistently with the discipline that will fit 
them for the future struggle. I cannot bear to see a child weep- 
ing. I almost feel, like Cardinal Manning, that " every tear shed 
by a child is a blood-stain on the earth." Yes ! give them all the 
enjoyment they can hold. The struggle is before them. The 
ascending slope of life is a Via Dolorosa, a mounting of Calvary 
heights, if not an actual crucifixion. Want, despair, sin, sickness, 
disappointment, are waiting in the hidden caverns to leap out and 
waylay them. And many, how many ? will fall by the wayside, 
and find in the arms of merciful death, the final relief from the 
struggle and burden of life. 

LXXIII. 

Hence, undoubtedly, the evening of life is best. We have toil- 
fully mounted the hillside ; the setting sun is behind us, and soon 
we, too, shall go down into the great sea to awake again, we hope, 
in the dawn of a brighter morrow. Many of our comrades have 
fallen by the way ; we regret them, we think gently and compas- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 203 

sionately of them, but we cannot help j ust a little self-complacency 
in the reflection that we have emerged victorious on the summit 
of life, whilst so many have fainted by the way. We have real- 
ized at least, too, that the worries of life are mere incidents — the 
inevitable concomitants of an imperfect state of being; and we 
now make no more of them than of the wind-bufTettings and the 
rain-drenchings that brought the color to our cheeks and sent the 
warm blood leaping through every capillary and nerve of our 
system. Yes! youth is the preparation for age; age is the 
fruition of youth. How well that kindly optimist, Robert Brown- 
ing, knew it : 

Grow old along with me ! 

The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made ; 

Our times are in His hand, 

Who saith, ' ' A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half: trust God : 

See all ; nor be afraid ! ' ' 



LXXIV. 

And then, behind all and crowning all, there remains the 
Earth-Cure — the great solemn enfolding in the arms of Mother 
Nature of her weary and worn children. From her breast they 
sprang, little jets of organic life, and mounted higher and higher 
in the sun and light, making sweet sprays of pearls as the sun- 
shine caught them and played with their crystal splendors ; or, 
alas ! perhaps, muddy and discolored from a too great mixture of 
clay. But, clear or turbid, they have touched their altitudes, 
and now break lower down and lower, until they are caught to 
the breast of Mother Nature again, and lost in her final embrace. 
And she is merciful, and knows nothing of her weak or wayward 
children. She folds them up with all their perverseness, and 
gently covers them all over, and is silent, till they pass into the 
charity of oblivion. But, meanwhile, she puts forth her tender 
grass and wild flowers above the most erring as well as the most 
faithful of her children ; and allows her willows to weep down- 



204 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

ward, and her ubiquitous ivy to drape their headstones, as if even 
these were too loud-tongued for her wishes ; and, as if in answer 
to the poor querulous desire of mortals to be remembered, she 
allows Time to pass his iron finger across their names, and 
whispers, " Be forgotten, be forgiven, and rest! " 



LXXV. 

But here Mother Church breaks with Mother Nature, and 
emphatically demands some perpetuation of memory. She will 
not silence the pitiful pleadings from the tomb. All is not over. 
And all is not at rest as yet. The weary brain is stilled ; no more 
troublous and restless thoughts flash across it. The limbs are at 
rest. No pain shall evermore rack them; no pleasure disturb 
them. But the spark of the Divinity which they imprisoned is 
still pursuing its way, through penal fires and across the dark airs 
of other worlds to its final resting-place whence it set out ; and it 
seeks peace, peace and rest ! Even the rather libertine fancies of 
Lord Byron were touched by the simple, Christian epitaphs in the 
cemetery at Ferrara : 

Martini Luigi 
Implora Pace. 

Lucrezia Picini 
Implora Eterna Quiete. 

" The dead had had enough of life," he says, " and all they wanted 
was rest, and that they implore ! There is all the helplessness, 
and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise from the 
grave — 'implora pace.' I hope whoever will survive me, and 
shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, 
within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see these two words, and 
no more, put over me." 

LXXVI. 

There is no doubt but that all the thought of the world has 
been used up long since, and that the most a modern writer can 
do is to present the thoughts that were familiar to Hebrew, Greek, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 205 

or Roman, in new forms and more intelligible language. Here, 
for example, is a fine piece of philosophy, put by two minds ex- 
tremely remote from each other by time, space, and habit, and 
couched in characteristic phraseology : 

" He (Lamennais) also said to us on hearing the clock strike, 
1 If one were to say to this clock that in an instant it would be 
destroyed, it would none the less strike its hour until that instant 
had arrived. My children, be like the clock; whatever is to hap- 
pen, always strike your hour.' " 3 

The more modern counterpart of this is from the " Aes Trip- 
lex " of Robert Louis Stevenson : 

" It is best to begin your folio ; even if the doctor does not 
give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one 
brave push, see what can be finished in a week. . . . All who 
have meant good work with their whole heart, have done good 
work, although they may die before they have time to sign it. 
. . . Life goes down with a better grace, foaming in full tide 
over a precipice, than miserably struggling to an end in sandy 
deltas. That is the true meaning of the saying about those whom 
the gods love. At whatever age death may come, the man who 
does so, dies young." 

And are not both sentiments purloined from Montaigne : 
" Nous sommes nayz pour agir. Le veux qu'on agisse, et qu'on 
alonge les offices de la vie, tant qu'on peult ; et que la mort me 
treuve plantant mes choulx, mais nonchalant d'elle, et encores plus 
de mon jardin imparfaict." 4 

LXXVII. 

There is something heroic in these expressions of the same 
idea. For we must remember that just as he spoke those words 
there loomed up before Lamennais that awful cloud, which came 
down upon him swiftly and never lifted — in whose tenebrous folds 
his clock of life sounded and was shattered ; and before the 
other the shadow of that death that ever crept closer and closer, 
until it enveloped him, and hurried him away from a world he 
loved, and which loved him in turn. But really the idea is com- 

3 Journal of Maurice de Guerin. * First Book, Chapt. XIX. 



206 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

mon to all fine minds. Look forward fearlessly, and do not pene- 
trate, or seek to penetrate, too closely behind the veil ! Drown 
all doubts and fears in the duties of the present and solve all diffi- 
culties by steady, persistent work. Take up problems, if you like, 
for intellectual pleasure or profit ; but always remember the solu- 
tion of them is beyond the grave. Hold fast by the certainties 
that are revealed ; but seek not the solution of mysteries which of 
their nature are insoluble. And keep on the harness of battle to 
the end. So sings a kindred spirit, Robert Browning : 

I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last ! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, 

And let me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 

LXXVIII. 

There is a curious similarity, not only between the thoughts 
that surge through the minds of men ; but even between the phys- 
ical features of many who, for good or ill, have left the impress of 
their presence on the world. There is a startling resemblance, for 
example, between the faces of two beings so utterly dissimilar as 
Voltaire and the Cure of Ars; between Rabelais and St. Bene- 
dict Joseph Labre ; between Savonarola and George Eliot. How 
is it accounted for ? Were both originally cast in the same phys- 
ical and mental mould ; then when the latter came to be acted 
upon by outer influences, it yielded to the pressure; and whilst 
the facial expression remained unchanged, as the flesh is less plas- 
tic than the spirit, the spiritual elements were shaped into the 
symmetry of the Saint or the distorted lineaments of an abortive 
or misshapen genius ? Yet, the similarity is startling, although 
there is certainly in the face of the Saints a curious enamelling, 
a surface of sanctified beauty, that make the wrinkles beneath 
something far different from those that thought has indented on the 
face of the philosopher ! 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 207 

LXXIX. 

Benedict Joseph Labre! Saint? Yes. Canonized? Yes. 
The superb defiance flung by the great Empire Church in the face 
of modern Sybaritism ! I confess to a certain sense of shrinking 
and squeamishness every time I stumbled across the words " cro- 
sus insectis," in the lessons of the Second Nocturne of his Office. 
I could not understand it. Is not cleanliness next to godliness ? 
What about St. Bernard's : " I love poverty, but not dirt ? " And 
St. Jerome ? Were not all our dear Saints remarkable for this ex- 
quisite sense of corporal, as symbolical of internal, purity ? And 
are not all our monastic, and conventual institutions, spotless and 
speckless, from attic to cellar ? Would not a young postulant, 
in any of our nunneries, be promptly dismissed for the least 
symptoms of untidiness ? And here is a beggar, a tramp, with 
just enough rags to cover him, but not to protect him, and 
these filthy in the extreme, raised on the altars of the Church for 
the veneration of the faithful ! What about the Church keeping 
abreast of progress, and leavening civilization, when she defiantly 
canonizes this revolting pilgrim and vagrant, who repudiates 
every canon of sanitary science, and goes around, from shrine to 
shrine, with his rags and vermin, in the days of Russian and Turk- 
ish baths, massage, superfine lingerie, and vermicides, and insecti- 
cides ad infinitum / 

LXXX. 

It was as great and as interesting a problem as Free-will and 
Fore-knowledge, Ideas Innate or Acquired, or any other psycho- 
logical question that might interest the ever inquisitive mind of 
man. I thought I should probe it to the end. I took up his life, 
written, mirabile dictu ! by the superfine Anglican converts of the 
'forties. It seemed to make matters infinitely worse. The habits 
of this Saint were simply appalling. He was a moving mass of 
vermin. He slept on dunghills. He ate the refuse of the poorest 
Italian cabins. He refused bread, and lived on cabbage stalks, 
orange-peel, and fragments of culinary refuse. Abominable! 
Loathsome ! No, my curled and perfumed and unguented friend ! 



208 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

Is there not something in Scripture about certain people that re- 
semble platters, well cleaned on the outside, but very filthy within ? 
And something about whited sepulchres ? May it not happen 
also that this strange loathsome figure, externally defiled, may 
have a splendor and purity all his own ; and that He who sees 
beneath the surface of things may discern sanctities beneath these 
grewsome surroundings, that would compel Him to send His 
angels from the high heavens to guard so resplendent a soul in so 
humble and defiled a tabernacle ? 



LXXXI. 

Defiled ? No. I retract that word. There was no defilement 
there. Nothing but the most exquisite and delicate purity of soul 
and body, so exquisite that it is almost certain this Saint never 
lost his baptismal innocence, and was kept absolutely free during 
his short life from that particular ensoiling which is especially 
antagonistic to Christian holiness and sanctity. His humility was 
perfect. When fine ladies stood up from the altar rails, and re- 
tired (we cannot blame them), when the Saint approached to receive 
Holy Communion, he bore the reproach with meek dignity, and 
besought the priest to communicate him apart from the congre- 
gation. He rejoiced that men shrank from him and loathed him. 
He sought humiliations as fools sought honors ; he courted 
affronts, as men court flattery. Modest, mortified, chaste as an 
angel, mortified more than Anthony, more hidden than an Alexis, 
as meek as Francis de Sales, as seraphic as the angel of Assisi — 
how now the ethereal splendors of his beautiful soul shine through 
the tattered and broken integument of flesh and garments ; and 
consecrate, as by some liturgical unction, the very things which 
seemed to the purely natural man an offence and a scandal to 
society ! 

LXXXII. 

This poor beggar died. He was picked up from the streets, 
fainting, and carried to a neighboring house. He never recovered. 
He passed out of the visible world, and saw God ! And then ? 
And then, all Rome went wild about the dead Saint. There was 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 209 

a tumult in the Eternal City. Messenger boys ran wildly through 
the streets crying : The Saint is dead ! The Saint is dead ! 
Crowds thronged the chamber where he lay, with the beatitude of 
Heaven on his face. The fine ladies who had shrunk away as he 
passed and gathered up closely their perfumed silks, actually- 
fought for one of those vile rags, which seemed so loathsome on 
the living frame ; but were now converted, by the magic of death, 
into precious relics to be kept in all their sordidness, and honored, 
both as souvenirs and talismans. The cry went forth demanding 
his canonization. Miracles are wrought by the dead body, as 
erstwhile by the living. He is beatified, and known as the Blessed 
Benedict Joseph for a century. And, finally, the great Pope, the 
reconciler of civilization and the Church, the writer of the great 
Encyclicals, and the sublime Carmina, the stately representative of 
all that is most cultured and refined in Catholicity, puts his final. 
imprimatur on the pilgrim and the beggar, and confirms the ver- 
dict of the faithful by the official canonization of the Church. 
And this in the very teeth of the greatest of all the centuries 1 

LXXXIII. 

What a strange, sublime, unhuman thing is that saintly desire 
for contempt ! It is a reversal of all the processes and passions of 
men. Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and 
ninety-nine human beings are consumed with the desire for honor,, 
for human respect, for the esteem of their fellow-beings. The 
passion is universal and intense. The courage of the warrior, the 
ambition of the statesman, the vanity of the poet, the slavery to 
fashion, the delirium of love — all are created and stimulated by 
that one central desire — the esteem of men. And lo ! here is one 
who, without affectation or hypocrisy, segregates himself from 
humanity, and places himself in the dust beneath the feet of men 
on the highways of the world. They take him at his word, 
trample on him, despise him, mock at him, leave him finally a 
mass of bruised compost ; and then in the awful revelation of 
death they discern the Saint, the peculiar one, and they go on 
their knees, and lift up the bruised and mangled figure, and kiss 
the wounds they themselves have made, and almost dismember it 



210 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

in their passion for relics ; and finally clamor to the great High- 
Priest at Rome to elevate that bruised figure on the altars of the 
Church, and to say that it was sacrosanct and holy. And, perhaps, 
under all this enthusiasm may be discerned that very vanity and 
self-seeking to which the life and death of the Saint were the 
keenest reproach. 



LXXXIV. 

But often (it should be oftener), those meek, self-effacing spir- 
its, who think the potsherds and dunghills too good for them, do 
command esteem even in this world. I can imagine with rev- 
erence and awe, the smitten monk, leaving his stall at a nod, and 
going up humbly to prostrate himself before the altar. I can 
imagine the Sister sharply chidden in Chapter, the hot blood 
mounting to the cheek and brow, but sternly ordered back by the 
voice of humility ; and I can see the smile, genuine and unaffected, 
with which that hurt and grieved soul will immediately afterwards 
do some little kindly, humble office for the one that smote her. 
These are the things that bring us to our knees, and compel us 
to kiss the ground where saints have trod. And if we ourselves 
are yet unchastened, and would quiver beneath the rod, at least it 
is something to know that we can reverence in others what is 
wanting to ourselves. Thank God ! no one yet, however antag- 
onistic to the Church, has ever ventured to paint a sullen monk or 
an angry and disobedient nun. It is a negative tribute to the 
genuineness of Catholicity, as the religion of Christ. 



LXXXV. 

But what about the folly of the majority, who pursue this 
phantom; and even stretch their mouldering hands from the 
grave to grasp it. Brought to the test of reason, can there be 
anything so ridiculous as to seek the good opinion of fellow- 
mortals like ourselves ? For, mark you, we seldom deceive our- 
selves as to our own insignificance. Whatever we appear or try to 
appear before the world, we cast a true, too true a reflection on the 
deep mirror of our own souls. And there we are not flattered. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 211 

How do we measure our opinion of others ? As a something not 
to be noted. Did we hear that a far-off author, or singer, or painter, 
was distressed by our poor opinion of him, it would make him 
simply ridiculous in our eyes, however flattering to our vanity it 
might be. And how does the judgment of others upon us differ 
from our judgment upon them? Not by a hair's breadth. But 
are quantities not to be taken into account by any sensible man ? 
For, what am I, or you, or any one, to nine-tenths of those who 
have heard of us ? A name — a certain collocation of a few letters, 
and no more. Of the I, or the Thou, they know nothing, or care 
less. A fall in stocks, a gray hair, an ill-fitting frock, is of far 
more consequence. 

LXXXVI. 

Why then are we disturbed, elated, or depressed, by praise or 
contempt ? Why, but because passion is more with us than reason, 
to say nothing of grace. Argue as we will, this human opinion 
weighs with us. It should not disturb the serenity of our 
thoughts even for an instant. Nay, even if one of those passion- 
ate, incontinent, undisciplined spirits should loom upon us out of 
his welcome invisibility, and say to our face what others speak 
against our mere name, how should it affect us ? Clearly not at all ! 
Let the creature carry his half-inarticulate, savage hate away 
with him into the darkness again ! He has come like a shadow, 
and like a shadow he departs. Let his evil words pass with him. 
Let them haunt his soul, and not thine. Thus, too, we should 
allow that most uncouth being, the flatterer, to depart. Let the 
treacle stick to his soul, and not to thine. Ay, but can we ? Yes ! 
if we were all saints and philosophers. Aye ! but if we were all 
saints and philosophers, would the wheels of the universe con- 
tinue to revolve ? 

LXXXVII. 

Mid-May ; and the virgin Spring in all her tender, and modest, 
and chaste beauties. My little garden is now " full." All the 
bareness of Winter has vanished ; and every tree and nook and 
corner is replete with rich vegetation. The rain, too, has fallen, 



212 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

soft, rich, " wet " rain ; and the ground is spongy and soft, and 
the leaves are glistening, and the blossoms are filled with the 
clear, pearly dew. You can see Nature and her children drinking 
from the fountains of the heavens ; and growing lush and lusty 
and vigorous under the benevolence of the skies. And what a 
picture ! The apple-trees are laden with pink and white blossoms, 
and they seem to stand out against the dark background of the 
forests behind, as clear as in a stereoscope ; but colored with the 
magic blending of petals that seem to hang in air, so delicate and 
beautiful are their colors. The tulips are just beginning to die 
away in a blaze of colors ; and the round balls of the peonies seem 
eager to break into their great, thick, glossy leaves, which in a 
week will make burning spots of color against the dark or speckled 
laurel. Overhead, the swallows, with wet wings, are cutting the 
ether into all manner of perfect segments and arcs ; and from the 
wet trees, the blackbirds and thrushes are pouring forth their 
deep, rich bell-tones, to call into existence the little lives that are 
hidden in the speckled or blue eggs lying nested beneath. 

LXXXVIII. 

But I think the greatest pleasure of these beautiful rich May 
mornings is that of listening to the music that bursts from every 
copse and tree from the throats of blackbirds and throstles, and 
seems to make the pure virgin air vibrate with melody. From 
the thick bosky verdure in the forest beyond, where the young 
leaves are still tender and silky; from the top branch of firs and 
pines ; from neighboring gardens, where the bird has become an 
"unseen song; " from the ivy over my head, pours a stream of 
melody, so rich, so varied, so sweet and joyous, that it would 
make the veriest pessimist thank God for the mere pleasure of 
existence. For, surely, those little creatures with their speckled 
breasts, or blue-black coats and scarlet beaks must feel that life is 
worth living, when they can pour out such rapturous music from 
their full hearts, careless as to who is listening, or how the world 
takes their improvisations, only anxious to get out the full tide of 
imprisoned melody before it chokes them with its impetuosity or 
breaks their little hearts in despair. And they do not know where 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 2\$ 

they will get their noontide or evening meal : they only feel that 
some Hand feeds them and their little ones : and they pour out 
their gratitude blindly at His feet. 



LXXXIX. 

But this glad matin oratorio, with its chorus of a hundred 
male voices, sinks into the commonplace, almost, when in the 
evening, the trees black against the saffron sunset, a single 
missel-thrush takes his place on the highest naked branch of an 
apple tree or a pine tree, and whilst all around is hushed, tolls 
across the valley the Angelus of his own creation. One could 
listen to him forever, and believe the old monastic legend, so 
sweet and far away in these raucous and rabid ages, of the monk 
who followed the singing bird to immortality, and came back to 
his monastery after a century had passed which he thought an 
hour or a day. It is inexpressibly beautiful, these calm Spring 
evenings — clear, blue sky overhead, absolute silence all around, 
the hush of Nature going to rest ; and this vesperal hymn alone 
waking up echoes across the river, and waking, perhaps, sleepy 
birds who querulouly demand : " Is this the dawn ? " One would 
give a good deal to be able to describe its enchantment. I know 
but one who has adequately done so. I think Crashaw's 
" Music's Duel ' ' the finest — (well, I must not talk in superlatives) 
but amongst the finest — (which is only a comparative-superlative) 
of poems in the English language. I think it is almost worthy 
of this evening solo of my missel-thrush ; and I cannot say more. 
That great Catholic poet received his reward, even in this world : 
He died — Canon of Loreto ! 



XC. 

I confess I feel a sense of personal aggrievement when I see 
this spiritual song, embodied in so frail a form, stoop down to the 
commonplaces of life. I never could understand how people 
could talk about a great sermon, or how any preacher could 
listen ever to adulation, when he has just come down from Sinai, 
with the sun in his face and the glory around his head. It seems 



214 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

a horrible anti-climax to tell such a man : That was a beautiful 
sermon ! Silence is the only legitimate comment. So, too, how 
can you reconcile a great performance, say by Kubelik on the 
violin, with the miserable chit-chat of the audience ? And worst 
of all, what a horrible disillusion to turn from the inspirations of 
some great poet to his " Letters." The life of a poet should never 
be written. The world should be content with what he has given 
them. There should be no inquiries as to the how or the why. 
There is his work, and take it with gratitude. The life of Edgar 
Allan Poe, for instance ! Who would not wish it unwritten, with 
all its terrible squalor and imbecility — a great dark night, lighted 
only by two stars — his gentle wife ; and the incomparable woman 
to whom he wrote those sublime lines — My Mother ! 

XCI. 

Yet what delicacy, what purity, runs through all his verse. 
Not a line, not a word, to shock the tenderest sensibilities. Con- 
trasted with his life, sunk in all kinds of sottishness, it seems 
difficult to believe that the profligate of college life, and the ingrate 
to his best benefactor, could have written those lines, which might 
be hung like an amulet around the neck of a child, and which he 
inscribed : To Helen ! But I find that this was the case with all 
the mystical poets. Coleridge, Blake, Mangan, Poe; and in our 
own time, Francis Thompson — are all singularly pure in their 
verses. How is it explained ? There is but one reading of the 
riddle, namely, that these men were poets, dowered with the 
insanity of genius, and absolutely oblivious in the raptures of in- 
spiration of anything, in word or deed, that could be deemed gross 
and sensual. On the other hand, the dramatist or mere rheto- 
rician, who cuts up so much eloquence into metrical lines, or who 
deals with exclusively human subjects, invariably slips into that 
pruriency and salaciousness which denotes the step-child, but not 
the direct offspring of the Muses. 

XCII. 

The most timid and reserved of young men might read the 
works of the poets just mentioned right through at a Boston Lit- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 21 5 

erary Circle, or in a family party after tea, or to a group of ladies 
on some balcony at a seaside hotel, — might read through with- 
out a blush, or a stammer, or a single look in advance, tentative 
of a rude word, or a dangerous line. But the same reader cannot 
take up a page at random of Shakspere, Byron, Goethe, or Burns, 
and read twenty lines without wishing he had bitten off his tongue. 
Yet, such is the force of national prejudices, that these are the 
demigods of their respective nations. There are more monu- 
ments to Burns in Scotland than to Dante in Italy ; and if Byron's 
remains had to be buried in Newstead Abbey under a nation's ex- 
communication, the censure has long since been reversed. " What 
is the secret of these men's popularity? " I once asked a Scotch- 
man. " They represent in their writings the virtues of their respec- 
tive nations," was his reply. 

XCIII. 

The great question to be solved, or rather presented for solu- 
tion in our generation is, whether we are to accept universally the 
ideal when it comes into conflict with the actual ; or whether we 
are to accept the actual, and put aside the ideal, when they fail to 
harmonize, as they are pretty certain to do in modern ethics. This 
is the race question, the religious question, the question of creed, 
the question of ethos, to all " tribes, and races, and peoples, and 
tongues." The world on this broad ground challenges the Church. 
"Give up your ideals," it says, " and become even as me." The 
Parisian Gavroche says the same to the Breton peasant. " Give up 
your faith, and take our positivism ; your faith in saints, and take 
our heroes ; your purity and sweetness, for our gaiety and licen- 
tiousness ; your absurd ideas of chivalry and honor for our theories 
of expediency and profit." In the streets of Rome the contadini 
from the mountains meet a similar challenge. The Czech or Tyro- 
lese will hear the same on the streets of Vienna ; the moudjik 011 
the pavements of Moscow ; and it is repeated in a thousand ways, 
by word, rebuke, statute, coercion law, plank bed, and hard labor, 
to the Irish peasant and laborer, who has been driving his fist into 
the face of this temptation for nigh seven hundred years. The 
difference now, however, is that friends, as well as foes, seem to 



216 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

combine for the compromise ; and say to the Martyr for the Ideal, 
4t Thou fool, rise from thy gridiron ; and be thou as we." 



XCIV. 

It is just possible that the question will settle itself eventually, 
nay that it is settling itself by the abandonment of the ideal for 
the actual. " We cannot subsist, much less succeed," is the cry 
from the markets of commerce through the world, " if you insist 
on your ideals." " If I were to accept your theories of commer- 
cial honesty," said a certain merchant to the present writer not 
long ago, " I should close my place of business, and enter the 
workhouse with my wife and family." He abandoned the ideal 
for the actual ; and appears to be happy in the compromise. But 
as an academical question, how is it to be arranged ? The one 
postulate of conscience and Commandments is adamantine. You 
can by no means fit it in with libertinism which modern freedom 
demands ; nor with dishonesty and overreaching which commerce 
demands; nor with brutality which successful pushfulness de- 
mands; nor with callousness of conscience, and hardness of heart 
which are essential conditions of worldly success ; nor with pre- 
varication, which is the lever of life to the ambitious. You can- 
not do it. Reflex principles will not help you. It was on stone, 
not on water, the Commandments were written; and the "still 
small voice " thunders above the clamor that would stifle it. And 
so thou, O Breton fisherman, with thy saints and thy faith, and 
thy scruples ; thou, too, O Irish peasant, with thy seven century 
traditions, must take a hindmost place in the noisy procession of 
thy race towards . 

xcv. 

That word can only be supplied when the mad rush of the 
modern world shall break itself to pieces against the inevitable. 
Then comes reconstruction, most probably on the higher basis of 
Christianity. Meanwhile, to all pure and holy souls, and there 
are many such everywhere — students in universities, young men 
climbing painfully into their professions, and somewhat disgusted 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 2\J 

at the means they have to employ to reach them ; young ladies 
in the world, whose hearts are sick with its hollowness and their 
own degradation ; grave, bearded men, who have seen life and been 
disillusioned, — all these will fly from the Actual, at least in spirit, 
and seek happiness, or rather honor, in the Ideal. And to these 
the Church will appeal, not so much by its dogmas, for theirs will 
not be intellectual, but moral wants ; but through its ethoses alone 
holding in itself all that men have ever dreamed of perfection. 
These, the unhappy, but elect, will be forced to admit that in the 
Sisters of Charity bending over the wounded on the battlefield, 
over the leper in his hut, over the cancerous and gangrened in the 
City Hospital, humanity has reached its apogee ; and in the Catholic 
girl, or wife, or mother, the culmination of that civilization which, 
springing from the chivalrous ideal, has ever sought its lost loyal- 
ties in the person of a pure and cultured womanhood. 

XCVI. 

cfxovrjaev o-vvtrolcnv ! She, the Church, will speak to the 
Elect, and the Elect will hear! Souls sick unto death with 
the modern atrophy of scepticism or unbelief, will lift their weary 
eyes to her, Mother and Mistress of Peoples, and she will be 
to them what the brazen serpent in the desert was to the bitten 
and poisoned Israelites. And they shall be healed. Learned 
men, with all the higher powers dried up and impoverished by 
the exclusive exercise of the critical faculty, will turn to the foun- 
tains of her philosophy, where truth forever sweetens the bitter 
waters of Marah ! Young students, whose fresh enthusiasm for 
all that is sublime and most perfect has not yet been stifled by 
their contact with the Actual, will pass into her cloisters, and find 
there the peace and refreshment which a well-reasoned, prophetic 
anticipation of life tells them is not to be sought for nor found in 
the mad struggle into which the ambition and selfishness of men 
have turned our short pilgrimage of life. But above all, the pure 
of heart, whose reward is to see God, shall see Him even whilst 
they are yet in the flesh, in that strange presentment of His life 
and doctrine, which the daily life of the Church exhibits ; and 
they predestined by their purity of life, and led and defended by 



2l8 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

legions of angels, like the Lady in Comus, shall find all that the 
spirit demands in the fine exaltation of austere lives, fleshless 
loves, restrained imaginings ; and all bounded by limitless horizon 
of everlasting union with the regenerated and perfected elect ! 

XCVII. 

For the more one studies the expression of popular ideas 
or feelings in modern literature, the more clearly is it seen 
that it is the desire to get back to Pagan license of life that 
is at the root of all modern irreligion. Disputes about dogmas 
and creeds are but the tactical and strategic movements designed 
to cover the retreat of Humanity towards its long-lost Pagan 
ideals. Once and again a candid poet or philosopher or cynic, 
like Goethe, or Renan, or Heine, will admit it. The rest of the 
world deems such admissions premature, but secretly likes them. 
The intense devotion, the sweetness, the delicacy, the elevation of 
thought, that belong to Catholicity are beginning to fall on a 
world that every day is becoming more egotistic, more selfish, 
more sensual. But to all pure and lofty minds, to the humble, the 
mortified, the pure of spirit, the seekers after God in every one of 
the dissolving and disappearing creeds that sprang from the fatal 
Reformation, the divine and holy spirit which breathes through 
the testaments of Christ, will still appeal ; and they will find all 
their concepts and ideals of holiness, sweetness, purity and charity, 
in the faith, which alone professes to declare with the certainty 
of a special revelation, that its children did in very deed, touch 
these summits of sanctity, whilst on earth, and have been gath- 
ered, as a reward, into the ineffable blisses of Heaven. 

XCVIII. 

So, too, all that rage against Christianity find their apology in 
its restraints, not so much on the human intellect, as on human 
passion and pride. Deep down in their hearts is the secret desire 
of unlimited license. In fact, when one comes to consider what 
is the one doctrine or rather precept of the Church against which 
the Gentiles rage, and the people meditate vain things, it is found 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 219 

in that one word, Restrain ! Control ! It is this cold discipline 
that exasperates the world ; and still more, the felicity of those 
who, in practising that discipline, have found the secret of all 
human happiness. But apart from divine grace, it needs not only a 
certain elevation of thought, but a certain sense of refinement and 
delicacy, to understand this. It is in this connection it has been 
said that vulgarity is inconsistent with Catholicity. For the 
essence of vulgarity is self-esteem and self-love ; and the essence 
of Catholicity is self-effacement. Hence, too, in the vocabulary 
of our religious communities, the mundane word " politeness " is 
never mentioned. Its place is taken by its mother, who is 
" Charity." 

XCIX. 

I think that a very cursory research in the pages of such liter- 
ature as we possess, would very easily prove this Materialism, not 
only in doctrine, but in principle and practice, is the very an- 
tithesis of the Church's teaching. It leads of necessity to gross- 
ness and license ; whilst the truths of Christianity develop, without 
effort, the sense of delicacy and refinement, which is the reputed 
flower of civilization, but which has really sprung from the teach- 
ings of the Church. Hence, all purely materialistic literature 
degenerates, as if unconsciously, into unclean and unholy expres- 
sions ; whilst all Catholic literature is redolent of the immaculate 
sweetness and delicacy of pure and unsullied minds. It is ex- 
tremely plain ; and as easy of proof as of assertion. Yet, it will 
help a little to quote the admission from the lips of an antago- 
nist, who could never shake himself entirely free from the enchant- 
ment of his Catholic childhood. It is Ernest Renan, who says 
in the close of his last letter to the Abbe Cognat : " What you 
say of the antagonists of Christianity is very true. I have, as it 
happens, made some curious researches on this point, which, when 
completed, might form a somewhat interesting narrative. The 
consequences would appear triumphant to the orthodox; and 
especially the first, viz., that Christianity has rarely been attacked 
hitherto, except in the name of immorality, and of the abject doc- 
trines of materialism — by blackguards in so many words. This is 
a fact, and I am prepared to prove it." 



PART IV 

SUMMER 



(221) 



SUMMER. 



I. 



What a curious thing is our sense of beauty and propor- 
tion ! How far we take it, and then tire of it ! The ambition 
of every amateur gardener is to imitate in his flower-beds tapestries 
or wall-papers — what is technically known as carpet-gardening. 
Few attain to its perfection, which generally consists in an 
outer rim or embankment of gray garden leeks, with their pretty 
blossoms, which are ruthlessly snipped off because they spoil 
the proportion of colors ; an inner border of blue or white 
lobelia, with its delicate medicinal blossoms ; then a deep purple 
circle of beetroot, within which are ranged row after row of gera- 
niums of all forms and colors, until the central oriflamme of yellow 
or deep-bronzed calecolarias is finally reached. The compactness, 
leaving no space of brown earth visible ; the evenness, which will 
allow no blossom to spring beyond the common level ; the gra- 
dations of color, contrasting with the emerald of the closely- 
cropped sward all around, are the elements and constituents of 
the beauty achieved with infinite pain and care. Then, suddenly 
your eye rests on a page from Florence or Rome, contemptuously 
decrying this well-ordered and prim perfection in contrast with 
the tropical luxuriance of Italy run wild ; and lo ! you accept the 
verdict, and turn away from your " English " garden, and pine for 
a wild flower in the forest, or the colored mosses by some moun- 
tain stream. 

II. 

It is the eternal protest of Nature against its great rival, Art ; 
and somehow the untamed heart of man responds to it. It is a 
tradition, probably well-founded, that a savage who has been re- 
claimed even in infancy, clothed, fed, educated in the lap of civ- 
ilization, will, if ever he get the chance of going back to his tribe, 

(223) 



224 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

fling aside the trappings of civilized life, and, taking up his blanket, 
revert to the primitive conditions of savagery again. And no 
doubt Nature itself, instead of moving onwards to artificial perfec- 
tion according to the theory of the evolutionists, is ever seeking 
to get back to its savage state. Let the hand of man be taken 
from her for a moment, and back she goes to prairies, and " for- 
ests primeval," and tangled bushwoods, and takes once more her 
savage cubs to her breast. And is there not something half-akin 
to this in our own yearnings to leave behind the prim, Quaker- 
like perfection of the lawn and the garden, and the trim drawing- 
room with all its pretty appurtenances, and spend one day at 
least on the breast of Mother Nature in all her savage solitude, 
her mosses our couch, her forest-trees our canopy, her streams 
and seas our music, and her vast silence our medicine to nerves 
and brain fretted by all the noises and artificialities of life ? 

III. 

The pathos of great cities is overwhelming. The submerged, 
shuffling along the pavements, side by side with their brothers 
and sisters who float just now with the tide, but some of whom 
are certainly destined to be themselves submerged ; the anxiety 
of the young to attain to position and wealth ; the anxiety of the 
middle-aged to retain these slippery treasures ; the loungers in 
the parks not knowing well how to kill time ; the ministers to 
human vanity in the shops ; the stricken ones, wearily plodding 
along with mothers or sisters to seek help in the back, dark parlor 
of some noted physician ; the many colossal and forbidding man- 
sions of disease, or sin, or death ; the alarm-bell of the ambu- 
lance with its horrible freight of wrecked and broken humanity ; 
the Courts of Justice and condemned cells ; and perhaps, worst 
of all, the stately, gaslit apartments, where men and women, in 
despair of happiness, seek its meretricious rival, excitement — all is 
melancholy and overpowering. It is the aggregate of misery 
that strikes you. In the country, unhappiness is fairly divided. 
Here and there a mortal, fretting under his load, and seeking in 
vain relief. But he is only a speck against the azure. In cities, 
unhappiness seems a cloud that blots out heaven altogether. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 225 

IV. 

But, somehow one of the most pathetic things in a great city 
is the aspect of an evergreen shrub, which, planted within a black 
iron railing just outside some fashionable drawing-room window, 
seeks to wear out its wretched life in that prison. Just above it 
perhaps, in a square, decorated box, are hyacinths in spring, or 
white begonias in summer; and every morning, some fair, jewelled 
hand, or perhaps the white, pure finger of a child, is stretched out 
shyly to give them the little water that keeps up their artificial 
life. No face bends over them. That's as much against our 
conventionalities, as if every house was a harem. But no one 
heeds that poor shrub. With dry, sapless roots, tainted and 
blackened leaves, it looks wearily at the sun, until, as in a kind 
of leprosy, leaves droop, and wither, and fall down ; then the 
wrinkled little branches become dry sticks; and one day it is 
seen that only a blackened skeleton remains. It has pined for its 
forest life, for winds and rains, for the soft burden of the snow ; 
for the pleasant, if hurried visit of the blackbird or thrush ; per- 
haps for the soft nest where the young of both are laid. It is an 
exile in the wilderness of brick. It eats out its heart and dies. 



The most lonely thing in cities is a summer twilight. Sum- 
mer twilights, however beautiful, are supremely melancholy. The 
vesperal song of birds, the swift groupings of swallows overhead, 
the return of the rooks in stately procession, the steely blueness or 
purple of eastern skies, the branched trees, black against the 
daffodil sky where the sunlight yet lingers, the swift whir of the 
bats, the dancing of midges, the closing of the flowers, are all 
harbingers of night; and, as yet, we deem Night a kind of Death, 
until we know better. It is all very sweet, and tender, and beau- 
tiful, but there is a note of sadness somewhere. Hence, I have 
heard many say, that in these beautiful twilights, that, with us, 
stretch up to ten o'clock and further, they yearn for the cosy 
fireside of winter, and the companionship of blazing logs, and the 
book, and the music, and the tea-urn. It is quite clear that this 



226 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

feeling is begotten of the common natural impulse to regret the 
end, or the departure, or the close of anything which has become 
familiar to us. It is the sadness of all " Farewells," — at the rail- 
way station, at the pier, at the door, at the marriage service, and 
most of all at the grave. Especially, when those without faith 
say the final farewell, as poor Huxley over his dead child. It is 
less poignant with us who, as in Swiss cemeteries, always write on 
the tombstones : Anf Wicdcrsehen ! 



VI. 

This must have been what the Psalmist had in his mind when 
he said, or sang : " In the evening weeping shall have place ; and in 
the morning gladness." For, in the morning, we come out of the 
far land of dreams and mystery, and emerge into the glad realities 
of life. In the evening, the realities begin to fade all around us, 
and we are about to enter into the unknown and trackless ways 
of sleep and oblivion. There is a certain reluctance in all human 
hearts to venture on the mysterious or unexperienced. We cling 
to what we know. We dread the unrevealed. Children invari- 
ably hate to be taken away from the company of the living, and 
to be left with the companionship of the dark. All day long 
they played in the sunshine. Now shadows impenetrable gather 
around them. They are alone — and alone with the impalpable 
and mysterious. And they dread it. The feeling is shared even 
by grown-up people. The mysteries of Night, however beautiful, 
are mysteries, and we pine for the visible and the real. Hence, 
too, is prayer more suitable for the evening than for the morning. 
The swift delight of coming out of the shadowy land into the 
sunshine does not predispose to prayer. But, at night, we move 
into the shadows again; and the awe and reverence that are all 
around us, penetrate our souls. We kneel, and think, and become 
reverent. And then we pray. 

VII. 

How did Blanco White come to write his famous sonnet, " To 
Night " (probably the only instance in literature where Fame" has 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 227 

been summoned by one poem in fourteen lines), if he had then 
abandoned his faith ? His comparison of Night and Death is a 
purely Catholic idea. The natural trembling of humanity for 

This glorious canopy, 
This lovely frame of light and blue, 

is what we still feel at the approach of night, until we perceive that 
the sun was the real veil, drawn for a moment over countless 
splendors, and that he goes down into the sea only to make way 
for " Hesperus with all the host of heaven." And so it is with 
Death. Life is the day-star, the sun of our petty existence, veil- 
ing from our eyes the splendors of eternity. Death is the inter- 
preter, the revealer : our last breath is our apocalypse. But yet 
so controlled are we by our senses, that there is always an unde- 
finable feeling of loneliness at sunset and at death. We are 
parting with the familiar, and going out to the unfamiliar; for 
night, with all its starry splendors, is unknown to us. We know 
the gas-jets of the ball-room and saloon, the electric arcs in the 
theatre. We never see the countless suns of the universe. And 
death is unfamiliar, with all our experience of its surroundings. 
We must pass through its gates to understand its tremendous 
revelations. 

VIII. 

But to come back. I think the city twilights are the most 
pathetic of all. The sinking, yellow sun streaming along such 
great thoroughfares as Trafalgar Square and the Strand in Lon- 
don ; or down along the Champs Elysees in Paris, and lingering 
on window, or column, or roof, has an aspect of extreme loneli- 
ness, emphasized by the little, twinkling eyes of star-jets or arcs, 
in cafe or restaurant, or even beneath the solemn trees. Man is 
summoned from labor to rest ; and if one can pass by what he 
sees is the evening amusement of those " whose lines are cast in 
pleasant places," and watch the proletariat, the weary, bent, and 
broken masses of humanity, shuffling by with hod or mattock on 
shoulder, and probably envying the u elect of the earth " who 
sit within their gorgeous clubs or cosy corners in the fashionable 
restaurant ; and then follow them further to their foul haunts in 



228 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

by-street or tenement house, and think of all the squalor an,d des- 
titution and low mental and moral environments, one regrets that 
sunlight or twilight should pierce through and reveal the sur- 
roundings of toiling humanity ; and would wish rather for the 
merciful darkness of winter that seems more in keeping with, and 
certainly covers more effectually, the sordid aspect which life 
turns towards her suffering and unhappy children. 

IX. 

This thought broke suddenly upon me (nor can I remove 
the haunting fascination of it to this day), one summer evening 
very many years ago. It was not in a great city, but on a sunny 
island, "a summer isle of Eden," which, by some tasteless in- 
genuity, had been made a penal settlement. A mission was being 
conducted there by Regulars from the city ; and we had been 
invited over to hear the convicts' confessions. It was pretty late 
when we finished, and on our way to dinner we had to pass 
through the dormitory or sleeping apartments of the prisoners. It 
was just five o'clock, and the summer sun was streaming across 
the bay, lighting up the headlands all around and the deep hulls 
of the ships, and casting great long shadows of buildings, and 
masts, and wooded promontories across the darkening sea. All 
was sunshine, and life, and sweetness without; all was darkness 
and desolation here. For we saw but strong cages, tier over tier, 
walls and partitions of corrugated iron, and a net of strong wire 
or iron in front of each cage, through which alone the little air, 
and the little light from the outer hall penetrated. Each cell was 
eight feet by four, and each, even at that early hour, on that 
sweet summer evening, had its human occupant. Some were in 
bed ; others sat drearily on the wretched wooden stool and stared 
like wild beasts at us. All were locked in. It was a human 
menagerie. I have often seen prisoners since then, even under 
worse circumstances. But, somehow, those wire cages haunted my 
imagination. And then we stepped, free and unembarrassed, and 
honored by the very warders, who held in their hands the keys 
of these human cages. The summer sun was oppressive in its 
heat and light. A pleasure steamer, well filled with all the fash- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 229 

ion and style of a great city, panted by. A band was playing. 
No one gave a thought to the entombment of their fellow-mortals 
just a few yards away. 

X. 

Some evenings later, I, too, was locked in at a comparatively 
early hour in some such solemn twilight as I loved. It was at a 
Cistercian monastery. The bells had ceased their interminable 
tolling ; the rumbling of the organ was hushed ; the pattering of 
feet had ceased ; the very birds, as if respecting the Trappist rule, 
were silent. I sat and looked out across the darkening twilight 
at the white statues glimmering against the deep background of 
pines and laurels. If there be any spot on earth where there is 
peace, and rest, surely it is here. Some day, a tired world will 
demand monasticism as a luxury, or necessity. But that was 
not my thought as I sat there, and put my hand on some such 
work of Catholic philosophy, as the Imitation, or the Soliloquia of 
St. Augustine. My thoughts swiftly reverted to the penal settle- 
ment on the "isle of Eden " and the cages, and their occupants. 
What an enormous gulf separated one condition from the other ! 
There the one feeling uppermost was the degradation of human- 
ity ; here, you experienced its elevation. It was the nadir and 
zenith of the race. And yet, the conditions of life did not differ 
so much. Nay, so far as physical comfort or enjoyment, the 
prisoners are much better off than the monks. The latter rise 
earlier, have much coarser and more meagre fare, work harder, 
keep perpetual silence, sleep on harder couches, submit to greater 
humiliations. And yet, there is the whole width of the horizon of 
heaven between them. There you pitied, or compassionated; 
here you are reverent and envious. Despair seemed to hover 
over the prison ; but it is the wings of angels that lift the fringes 
of the pines that sentinel the mountain abbey. 

XI. 

But there is something more curious even than this. I should 
not like to say that those poor, squalid prisoners would gladly 
exchange their lot with the monks. That is doubtful. But there 



230 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

can be no doubt that the monks, if called upon, would assume the 
garb and chains of the felon, and in the terrible transmutation 
experience only the greater joy. And the attraction would be, 
the very degradation and contempt and loss of caste and honor, 
which is the peculiar lot of the convict. Does the world deem 
this credible ? Well, we have proofs. If saints seek contempt as 
ordinary mortals seek honors ; if they have regarded themselves 
as the peripsema and offscouring of humanity ; if they have begged 
to be laid on ashes in their dying moments ; or that they may be 
privileged to die on dunghills, remote from all human observation ; 
if a Vincent de Paul did go down to the galleys and suffer the 
cannon-ball to be riveted to his ankles, as you can see in that 
famous picture by Bonnat — why may not all this be repeated, 
when the spirit and teachings of Christianity are the same, and 
when from countless human hearts made invincible by charity rises 
ever and ever that prayer of St. Teresa, " Aut pati, aut mori? " 

XII. 

I wonder is the secret to be discovered in that saying of 
Emerson's : " The hope of man resides in the private heart, and 
what it can achieve by translating that into sense. And that hope 
in our reasonable moments is always immense and refuses to be 
diminished by any deduction of experience." But that immuta- 
bility of hope, my dear philosopher of Concord, demands the 
monk or the saint, or some such childlike and unspoiled tempera- 
ment as thine own. The "deductions of experience " point all the 
other way. To keep one's heart unhardened until death is the 
achievement of a saint. Every stroke of the hammer of experience 
tends to anneal it. The two great impulses of nature, even in its 
lowest forms, are self-preservation and reproduction, and both 
demand the wisdom of the serpent more than the meekness of the 
dove. And these impulses are accentuated and intensified by 
experience. Eveiy man stands solitary, with all other men's 
hands against him. He must fight for existence. Failure, defeat, 
is the one hell to be dreaded. Success is the supposed Elysium. 
Nay, all our modern systems of education tend thitherward. For 
what is all this terrible and complicated apparatus of education 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 23 1 

intended ? What is the meaning of all this competition, rivalry, 
gaining of prizes, etc. ? What but the preparation for the greater 
struggle ? And struggle means rivalry ; and rivalry, enmity. 
" One alone can attain supremacy." And that one must be thou, 
and no other. How are the best feelings of the heart translated 
into sense here ? 

XIII. 

Nay, in such a struggle, where the watchword appears to be : 
" We neither ask, nor give quarter ! " would not the uncontrolled 
impulses of the heart be the great traitors ? Could there be any 
hope of success for a man who would be, above all things, 
generous, compassionate, self-sacrificing, kind ? It is all right for 
you, my Crcesus-friend, whom I see labelled " multi-millionaire 
and philanthropist! " You can be lavish now, as much as you 
please. Nay, you must get rid of much of that glittering ballast, 
else it will sink your stately argosy. For gold is a weighty 
metal, you know ; and you cannot steer well the ship of your 
fortunes so long as you have so much of a dead weight in the 
hold. But " philanthropist " ? It is a pretty euphemism ; and I 
don't want to quarrel with it. But I should have liked to know 
how you fared in the good ship Argo, as you set out in pursuit of 
the golden fleece. For I notice that Jason was very generous, 
and considerate and pious to the gods, after his many adventures 
and trials. He built a splendid mausoleum to the island-king 
whom he accidentally killed ; and sacrificed a sheep or two, after 
he, in concert with the amiable enchantress, Medea, had strewn 
the waters of the Euxine with the dismembered remains of the 
young Absyrtus. 

XIV. 

I will suggest something to you, " multi-millionaire and phil- 
anthropist," which may obviate such expiations by suspending 
the possibility of your errors, at least for a lustrum. What would 
you think of building and endowing a new species of educational 
institution, to be called the Collegium Christi ? It will have for 



232 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

its motto : Seffacer ; and " Bear ye one another's burdens " may 
be inscribed over the lecture-rostrums in the class-halls. It shall 
have all the latest appliances of science for the further conquest 
of Nature, and advancement of mankind. The extirpation of dis- 
ease, the destruction of social evils, the bridging of the mighty 
gulf between rich and poor, the lifting up of fallen humanity, 
the study of criminology from the standpoint of Christ, the ven- 
tilation of grievances not as subjects for parliamentary eloquence, 
but as subjects to be grappled with, and destroyed and removed — 
these shall form the curriculum of studies. We shall by no means 
exclude even Pagan ideals. You may have busts of Crates and 
Cincinnatus, but not of Crcesus ; Minerva and Apollo may grace 
your corridors, but the long perspective must not be bounded by 
glittering idola of Mammon and Plutus. For the former are 
merely symbols, and, alas ! rarely pass beyond their symbolic 
state. But these latter are the dread divinities that haunt the 
steps of mankind from the cradle to the grave. 

XV. 

But it is quite clear that to yield to heart-impulses and gener- 
ous emotions is to court failure in the struggle for existence, 
which has become with us synonymous with the struggle for 
wealth. Life is a masked bail, ending in success or failure. If 
you raise your domino, you might as well order your carriage, 
or droshky, or cab, and go home. You have revealed your 
identity, and the revelation is fatal. Unknown you might have 
moved safely amongst the unknown. But when everyone else 
knows you, whilst they remain unrevealed, what chance have 
you? You have lifted your visor in the tournament, and exposed 
yourself to deadly blows. Yes, get away from the tumult as 
quickly as you can ; and, with the experience of so terrible a les- 
son, get away amongst the world's anonymi, and hide yourself. 
Or take some other mask, and wear it closely ; and keep a close 
hand upon those traitorous, if generous emotions which are the 
fatal gifts of your heritage. It is all very melancholy ; yet it is 
consoling to know that men still have hearts to feel, and if they 
must stifle their appeals, they cannot altogether still their beat- 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 233 

ings. And, now and again, secretly and with misgivings, they 
may yield to the luxury of fine, pure emotions without the danger 
of ultimate betrayal. 

XVI. 

Hence, if you want to know what a man really is, watch him 
alone in the company of children. Here he can show himself 
as he is, because here he has nothing to fear and nothing to gain. 
Elsewhere, even in the society of his intimates and relations, he 
cannot reveal himself. Brother is a mystery to brother ; and father 
to child. In the drawing-room, in the council chamber, in the 
club, in the easy undress of an after-dinner, one would suppose 
that men are off their guard, and wear their hearts on their sleeves. 
No ! assuredly no ! Wherever there is a something to dread, the 
petals of the soul close in, as the petals of flowers at the coming 
of night ; and open reluctantly only when the light appears again. 
What a history of mankind in miniature is that little story of a 
certain Queen-Regent of France, who was down on her knees, 
groping around with hands and feet, playing Bo-peep with her 
little children in the nursery amidst shouts, and shrieking, and 
laughter. Suddenly, the ambassador of a great state is announced. 
The mother stands suddenly erect, and is transformed into the 
Regent. Stately, and stiff, and ceremonious, she steels her face 
against even a smile. That must be impenetrable. The domino 
is suddenly pulled down. She speaks in riddles, and answers in 
enigmas. She watches every line of his face to read it ; she heeds 
not his words. They mean nothing. So too with him. He is 
studying her eyes, her features. Both are playing a part; and 
both know it. They separate with mutual compliments and 
distrust. He goes back to his cabinet and mutters : " A clever 
woman ! " She goes back to her nursery, and resumes her play 
with her children. Here is the whole world in miniature. 

XVII. 

Pitiable ! Yes, perhaps so ! But, que voulez-vous ? You 
have outgrown your childhood, and mankind has got out of its 
nursery and small clothes. You talk pitifully of the world's 



234 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

childhood, of its myths, and legends, and superstitions. You speak 
of its heroes as of great big children of generous hearts and 
narrow minds. Your twentieth-centuried scientist is painfully like 
the grandiose hero of Locksley Hall : 

I to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, 
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains. 

Yes ! he has gone a step higher. He is illuminated. He has 
electric cars and railway murders. He has romantic novels and 
divorces. He has the Stock Exchange, and suicides. We are 
moving at break-neck speed, and the wheel of existence revolves 
so rapidly but few gain the summit of the tire : the many are pre- 
cipitated into the mire below. Inequalities between rich and poor 
yawn every day wider than the chaos between Dives and Lazarus. 
But on the wheel must go. He would be reputed a madman 
or, what is worse, an obscurantist, who would cry : " Slow down, 
O wheel of life, and let the fallen arise ! There is room for all, 
within you and around you ! Slow down, or break into splintered 
wood and twisted iron in the end ! " 



XVIII. 

One cannot help thinking of such things when memory re- 
calls that prison-cage and its occupants, and the long streamers of 
the yellow sun gilding all nature with their beauty. But these 
are sombre reflections, twilight thoughts. For hath not the ever- 
true Psalmist said : " In the evening weeping shall have place ; 
and in the morning gladness ? " Yes, let us carry, if we can, the 
"wild freshness of morning " with us through the entire day. 
From the Subhi kdzib, the False Dawn, the morning twilight, 
when sleepy little birds wake up reluctantly and ask each other, 
Is it day ? to the Subhi sddik, the True Dawn, when all the 
woods are vocal with the deep, rich music of blackbirds and 
thrushes ; from that dawn to the fuller solar light, when already 
nature is sheltering itself from his rays ; from that brilliance of 
morning to midday, when no sound is heard but the Coo, Coo, 
Coo, of the solitary ringdove, hidden away in deep umbrageous 
fastnesses ; on to the evening twilight, with its call to rest, let us 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 235 

keep the heart of the morning with its gladness, and make of the 
melancholy of twilight a palinode of the music of the dawn. For 
there is no night in these summer months, but a great ring of 
light, with a blank agate in the centre. And even that is shot 
through with light-waves from the faint auroras of the setting and 
the rising sun. 

XIX. 

It is strange that Nature, so fond of using its blue pigment, in 
other ways, is slow to waste it upon its most perfect handiwork, 
the flower. She lavishes and squanders it with the most incon- 
tinent profusion on her two great fields of color, the sky and the 
sea. But she is singularly economic in its use in the forest, the 
field, or the flower-garden. At least she only uses it on her tiniest 
creations, violets, or pansies, or forget-me-nots. These latter in- 
deed are the only really blue flowers ; for there is a strong infusion 
of Tyrian and regal purple in the violet and the pansy. But who 
ever heard of a blue rose, or a sapphire tulip or dahlia ? Nay, I 
am not betraying my ignorance. I know well what wonderful 
things our modern gardeners can effect ; and how by the aid of 
chemistry they can obtain what colors they please in their 
flowers. But I am speaking of Mother Nature. I want to know 
why she economizes that lovely color here ; and I want to know 
whether the " grand old gardener and his wife" had, without the 
aid of chemistry, which I suppose was then unknown, such a 
thing as a blue rose in the garden of Eden. And if not, why? 
It is an interesting speculation. Has Nature used all the pigment 
up in her skies and seas, so that none is left for her children ? 
Well, there is a compensation. " What is rare, is dear," said the 
old logic-treatise. And we cannot help loving the tiny, blue-eyed 
little children that look all so modest beside their regal and florid 
sisters. 

XX. 

I think this must be the reason why that truly mystical Ger- 
man poet, Novalis, chose a blue flower as his symbol of poetry, 
poetry itself being the supreme art in which all others are com- 



236 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

bined. And this was no tiny childkin of Nature, peeping shyly 
out of a mass of broad leaves, but a great, tall, pearly garden- 
queen, with a mass of broad, glittering petals, and springing from 
the moist earth near a stream. " Round it stood innumerable 
flowers of all kinds and colors, and the sweetest perfume filled the 
air. He saw nothing but the Blue Flower, and gazed on it long 
with nameless tenderness. At last, he was for approaching, when 
all at once it began to move and change ; the leaves grew more 
resplendent, and clasped themselves around the waxen stem ; the 
Flower bent itself towards him; and the petals showed like a blue 
spreading ruff, in which hovered a lovely face." So after in- 
numerable adventures, and wanderings through lonely, if beauti- 
ful places, he found the object of his life's search, and lo ! it was 
all but a dream. So, too, was his vision of the deep-blue river in 
which he, embodied in his hero, Heinrich, sunk, swallowed in the 
vortices ; and beneath which he meets once more Matilda, who 
put a wondrous secret word in his mouth, and it pierced through 
all his being. He was about to repeat it, when someone called, 
and he awoke. He would have given his life to remember that 
word. What was it ? The Blue Flower is Poetry. What is the 
Word? 

XXI. 

It is not a little singular that such a thinker, dreamer, mystic, 
yet mathematician and realist should be so little known even in 
his own country. Still more singular is it that we have never 
utilized his most powerful and penetrating work, Europe and 
Christianity. There is such a dearth amongst us, not of apolo- 
gies (of these we have enough), but of poetic and philosophical 
presentments of the aspects of Catholicity that present themselves 
so attractively to fine, spiritual natures, that one would have sup- 
posed we would seize on so eloquent a picture of what the Church 
is and does for humanity by putting before it the most sacred and 
poetic ideals. 1 The fact alone that it was selected by Schlegel for 

1 "These were beautiful, brilliant days when Europe was a Christian land, — 
when one Christianity occupied the Continent. Rightfully did the wise head of the 
Church oppose the insolent education of men at the expense of their holy sense, and 
untimely, dangerous discoveries in the realm of knowledge. . . . This great, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 2tf 

publication in the Athencetim, but suppressed by Goethe, is an 
eloquent argument in its favor; and if anything were wanting 
to such an argument, its magnificent defence of Catholic devotion 
to our Blessed Lady, so detested by materialists and neo-pagans, 
like Goethe, should prepossess us in its favor. He is but one of 
the many non-Catholic poets who have dreamed of perfect spirit- 
ual beauty, and found that dream realized in : 
Maria, lieblich ausgedriickt. 

XXII. 

There is a wide difference between Novalis, writing such hymns 
as this Fifteenth, and writing from a bed of sickness, with all the 
ghastly forerunners of death showing themselves in violent hemor- 
rhages, and his fellow-countryman Heinrich Heine, rising from his 
mattress-bed in the Rue d' Amsterdam, semi-paralyzed and almost 
blind, to make his way to the Louvre to pay his valedictory visit 
to the Venus de Milo. "Alas ! " so he thought the multilated 
statue replied, " how can I help you ? Do you not see that I, too, 
am powerless and armless, as yourself? " It seems like an excess 
of affectation — this farewell to the marble Aphrodite. There is 

interior schism (Protestantism), which destroying wars accompanied, was a remarkable 
sign of the hurtfulness of culture. The insurgents separated the inseparable, divided 
the indivisible Church, and tore themselves wickedly out of the universal Christian 
union, through which, and in which alone, genuine and enduring regeneration was 
possible. Luther treated Christianity in general arbitrarily, mistook its spirit, intro- 
duced another letter and another religion, the sacred universal sufficiency of the Bible 
namely. With the Reformation, Christianity went to destruction. Fortunately for 
the old Constitution, a newly-arisen order, the Jesuits, now appeared, upon which 
the dying spirit of the hierarchy seemed to have poured out its last gifts. In Germany, 
we can already point out with full certainty the traces of a new world, — a great time 
of reconciliation, a new golden age, a Saviour dwelling among men, under countless 
forms visible to the believers, eaten as Bread and Wine, embraced as the Beloved, 
breathed as air, and heard as word and song. The old Catholic belief was Chris- 
tianity applied, become living. Its presence everywhere in life, its love for art, its 
deep humanity, the indissolubility of its marriages, its human sympathy, its joy in 
poverty, obedience and fidelity, make it unmistakably a genuine religion. It is 
made pure by the stream of time, it will eternally make happy this earth. Shall not 
Protestantism finally cease, and give place to a new, more durable Church? " (Ex- 
tract from Novalis, quoted by Hofmer, who always maintained that Novalis was cer~ 
tainly a Catholic ; and quotes a number of authorities to support that statement.) 



238 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

no parallel to it, except in the prayer of Ernest Renan to Minerva 
in the Acropolis : 

" Je n'aimerai que toi. Je vais apprendre ta langue, desap- 
prendre la reste. J'arracherai de mon cceur tout fibre qui n'est 
pas raison et art pur. . . . Le monde ne sera sauve qu'en 
revenant a toi, en repudiant ses attaches barbares. Courons, 
venons en troupe." 

But then, as with Venus, comes the minor note of despair : 
" Tout n'est ici-bas que symbole, et que songe." 

XXIII. 

Venus was of but little help to Heine ; Minerva of less help to 
Renan. But how strangely and irregularly move the minds of 
men ! The German -Franco Jew scoffs, like his progenitors, scoffs 
at everything sacred and holy. He has one idol, and but one — 
Napoleon. The Breton Catholic does not sneer. Herein he differs 
much from his countrymen. He only laments. He bewails lost 
gods and present beliefs in the living and eternal divinity. Yet it 
might be doubted whether Voltairean gibes at Christianity would 
do more harm than his pathetic mourning over human credulity, 
although, in some mysterious manner, his critical faculty cannot 
altogether subdue some secret yearning after a spirit of faith 
which it has vainly exorcised. And lo ! the Lutheran 2 Novalis 
finds in Catholicity, although he never embraced it, " the only 
saving faith," and thinks the Reformation a " most unqualified 
evil." It only proves for the hundredth time that the impulses of 
a generous and pure heart are more than the " artistic sense," and 
lead farther and deeper than the " critical faculty," no matter how 
highly developed. 

XXIV. 

Probably no more interesting conversation was ever heard 
than that which took place between Novalis, on his death-bed, 
and his brother, Charles Hardenberg, and which eventuated in the 
conversion of the latter to Catholicity. These conversations, too, 

2 See former statement, and authorities quoted by Hofmer. 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 239 

afterwards gathered up and embodied, became the famous book 
of which we have spoken, Europe and Christianity. Novalis has 
been styled the German Pascal, and it would seem as if he had 
some idea of constructing a great scheme of ethical and philo- 
sophical principles on the same lines as his great French compeer. 
Like the latter, he had to leave his scheme unfinished, with just 
such pithy and pregnant apothegms as would lead us to con- 
jecture what might have been the grandeur of the completed work. 
But the above-named essay remains almost entire ; and to such 
minds as have the taste for such things, and can follow this mystic 
through the intricacies of unfamiliar thoughts, woven into untrans- 
latable language, the work, which aroused Tieck and Schlegel's 
enthusiasm, might be found not altogether unworthy or useless. 
For we do need a certain airy and poetic vesture for dry bones of 
doctrine ; and Theology, if the Queen of the Sciences, needs to be 
draped in royal robes to attract the homage of her subjects and 
the reverence of those who are not yet her vassals or ministers. 

XXV. 

" Poetry is absolute reality. This is the kernel of my philos- 
ophy. The more poetic, the truer." How this profession of 
Novalis jars upon the senses of those who see nothing but facts 
and hear nothing but arguments ! How it chimes with the more 
Catholic idea, which protests there is always something higher 
than reason ; and that something, the donum descendens desursum 
from the Father of all light. Yes ! faith and poetry are near akin. 
The mere reasoner will never touch the altitudes of the former ; 
the mere scientist, nay even the mere artist, can never reach the 
Pisgah-heights of the latter. There is something more than mere 
perception of judgment or taste ; and there are places where these 
faculties or gifts have to play a very subordinate part. "Credo, 
quia impossibile " is not unreasonable. It merely confesses a higher 
power, and a higher region of sentiment or thought. " Poetry is 
absolute reality." Yes, if it be the poetry, unsensual and trans- 
cendental, which penetrates beneath the surface of things, and sees 
their essence, which looks beyond art to that which it embodies ; 
which beholds man, the mystery, interpreted by God, the ever- 



240 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

lasting Reality ; and which understands that the mysteries of life 
and time are explained by Death and Eternity ! 

XXVI. 

Quite in contrast with that highly-mystical and spiritual tem- 
perament, as represented by Tieck, Fouque, and Novalis, is the 
dread realism of our day. Before the echoes of the Easter bells, 
ringing out their glad Alleluias have died away, we read that Tol- 
stoi's Resurrection had been placed on the stage in London, and 
that its representation, mainly owing to the acting of the lady who 
took the part of Katusha in the novel, has been an almost unpre- 
cedented success. It is a sign of the times — the eternal drifting, 
drifting of the world from pure and lofty ideals ; and its rapid 
descent towards the newly-awakened sympathy with all that is 
spiritually deformed and obscure. Fifteen years ago, ten years 
ago, five years ago, no manager dare put such a drama of vice 
and loathsomeness on the stage. The public censor would in- 
hibit it, and public opinion, if it escaped his censure, would con- 
demn it. To-day people throng the theatres to witness the most 
loathsome and degrading spectacle of a woman that even such a 
lurid imagination as Zola's could conceive ; and the change is ex- 
plained by the argument that the spirit of charity is now more 
abroad than ever ; and that even the purest minds may sympa- 
thize with the fearful degradation to which womanhood may be 
reduced by the habit of vice. 

XXVII. 

Such a plea is too pitifully transparent. To present an immoral 
and degrading spectacle on the score of morality, and to invite 
the virtuous and clean of mind to witness such grossness on the 
plea of awakening their sympathy, is too hollow a pretence to 
need refutation. Something else is needed, and it is forthcoming 
in the ancient formula: Art for its own sake, and Art independent 
of morality. This is intelligible. One can argue with it. No 
one would waste ink in refuting the former defence. It is the 
final apology for realism. It is the ethics of materialism worked 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 241 

out to a logical conclusion. But Art for its own sake ! How 
often have we heard it, how the changes have been rung upon it,, 
in painting, in sculpture, in poetry. It is the region where "there 
ain't no Ten Commandments," and where licentiousness may revel 
without license. And Tolstoi's Resurrection is Art. There is no 
question of it. NehludofTand Maslova are as terribly real as the 
infernal princes in Paradise Lost ; but, alas ! they represent pas- 
sions which are far more infectious and dangerous, because more 
human and common. It is indeed possible that their dreadful con- 
sequences may be a deterrent against vice ; but the principle is an 
old one and a safe one : It is better to attract towards the positive, 
than repel from the negative. And it is doubtful if vice can ever 
be painted in such hideous colors as to exorcise the passions of 
mankind. 

XXVIII. 

But, Art for its own sake ! Art as teacher, because of its 
own intrinsic perfection; and because perfection of any kind is 
morality ! This is a great and subtle heresy. I heard it once 
refuted by a parable, founded on fact. 

A young student, not enamoured of art for its own sake, but 
anxious to see two things — a certain painting of Turner's, and 
Burton's drawing of the head and face of Clarence Mangan, as he 
lay dead in the Meath Hospital — visited the National Gallery 
in Dublin. It was the old gallery, and this was many years ago. 
Having feasted his eyes on Turner, and sketched with a pencil 
roughly the head of the dead poet, he turned to depart. The 
gallery was well filled with sightseers, — city-loungers, strolling 
from picture to picture, and from statue to statue ; a few country 
cousins, staring with open mouths at the art-nudities that filled 
up the centre of the gallery ; here and there, a student copying ; 
not a few others affecting art-studies, and standing before large 
easels, or unfolding massive portfolios. But the student's work 
was done, and he hastened to leave. Just as he stood at the 
head of the broad staircase, a lady with her two daughters came 
up the steps with that eager look which people assume when they 
expect something delightful. The three stood on the top step, 
looked at the nude Venuses and Apollos for a moment, seemed 



242 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

transfixed into marble themselves, so tense were their surprise and 
horror; and then, with a simultaneous movement, they rushed 
down the staircase, and out into the open air. 

XXIX. 

" Obscurantists," " reactionaries," " prudes," I fancy I hear some 
one saying. But let me suppose that that lady and her two girls, 
brought out suddenly from the sweet seclusion of a refined home, 
and with all kinds of modest and delicate ideas, did yield to such a 
clamor ; and did go around, coolly and critically surveying these 
marble figures or plaster- casts, could we consider it really a gain ? 
It would be quite in accordance with all we read about the advance 
of education, the march of progress, the Zeitgeist ; but would we 
like it? Or, rather, would we not share the feelings of that stu- 
dent, who, on witnessing this glorious retreat of modest women, 
and all it conveyed more eloquently than the most impassioned 
oratory, did lift his hat above his head, and mutter deep down in 
his heart : Thanks be to God ? 



XXX. 

Here was the fundamental difference between Goethe and 
Novalis. The former was a Pagan, who worshipped Art for its 
own sake. The latter a Christian, who believed Art should be the 
handmaid of religion. To the former all the mediaeval churches 
in Christendom were not worth a Greek torso dug from the ruins 
of the Acropolis ; to the latter, these churches were not only 
monuments of faith, but temples whose sacred gloom shot through 
and through by heavenly lights, transfused through the conse- 
crated figures of virgins and martyrs, made an aureole on the 
mosaic of the floor, and around the daily lives of countless mul- 
titudes, who held that life had essential duties, but that their 
futures were safeguarded by the diligent combination of work and 
worship here. The former thought Christianity a development of 
priest-craft, happily checked and stayed by the Reformation. 
The latter, though a Lutheran, believed that the visible Church 
was the seamless robe of Christ; and that the capital crime of 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 243 

the Reformers was " separating the inseparable, dividing the in- 
divisible Church." And hence, like his modem disciples, the 
former regarded the French Revolution as a "truth, clad in hell- 
fire ; " the latter, the logical outcome and consequence of the 
moral and intellectual libertinism which commenced in the Refor- 
mation. 

XXXI. 

And philosophy! How he loathes that mock philosophy of 
France, which eliminating all that was gracious in the past, reli- 
gion and enthusiasm and self-sacrifice, makes of the universe a 
mill, and all the music of the spheres the rumble and clatter of 
machinery ! And how he rises as on wings of light to a right 
conception of its sphere, as postulating for man a universe and 
surroundings congruous with his higher wants and aspirations. 

" Philosophy can make no bread ; but she can procure for us 
God, freedom, immortality. Which then is more practical, 
philosophy or economy ? " 

" Philosophy is properly home-sickness ; the wish to be 
everywhere at home." 

" The true philosophical act is self-annihilation. This is the 
real beginning of all philosophy ; all requisites for being a disciple 
of philosophy point hither." 

"The first man is the first spirit-seer; all appears to him as 
spirit. What are children, but first men ? The fresh gaze of a 
child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most 
indubitable seer." 

XXXII. 

But, with all his sorrow over German reformations, French 
revolutions, and other disastrous signs of steady decadence in 
human affairs, he does not despond. He was too young and 
inexperienced to despair. It is only those who have reached the 
middle term of life that can afford to be pessimists. The young 
have the morning sun of gladness in their eyes ; the old, the set- 
ting sun of tranquillity. The gray sky hangs above life's mer- 
idian. Hence, Novalis is hopeful. He believes we yet shall see, 



244 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

" a new Europe, an all-embracing, divine place. When will it be ? 
We cannot say. Only let us have patience. It will come ; it must 
come ! " 

A century has gone by since he wrote these words ; and who 
shall say his prophecy has been verified ? Or where, if any- 
where, can we look around and say that the dream of this 
poet-philosopher has come true ? 

XXXIII. 

The problem suggested itself, and a possible solution one day 
two summers agone, as I sat in a cleft of red sandstone, in a 
cathedra, or chair, improvised by the action of the sea far down in 
what are known as the Diamond Rocks at a certain watering-place. 
I was out of the shadow of the cedars ; and my limited horizon had 
faded out and lengthened into the boundless expanses of the 
ocean. Here, beneath my feet, boiled the surges ; and there was 
no break in the continuity of that mighty element, which tossed 
up yellow flecks on these rocks, washed the shores of Labrador 
out yonder, and hid in warm sunny nooks beneath the palms of 
Sorrento, or under the domes and minarets of Stamboul. Some- 
how, one's mind expands with this glorious element, and the great 
dome of the sky leans down north, south, east, and west, un- 
manned and unlatticed by branches or foliage ; whilst the constel- 
lations repeat their splendors in the false firmament that is created 
beneath these dark-blue waves. It is a place where one may 
think a good deal and without interruption, unless Nature is in a 
capricious temper, and is determined to woo your mind from 
abstract thought to her ever-attractive interplay of wind and 
wave. 

XXXIV. 

I had come down from another popular resort on the same 
coast, along the savage sea-line that is jagged and bitten into 
mercilessly by the unrestrained Atlantic ; and here, on the warm 
summer mornings, before the visitors at the hotel had finished 
their morning papers and correspondence, I had Nature, in her 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 245 

most lovely and attractive and terrible aspects, all alone to myself. 
Yet, it was not solitude. How could it be when there were 
beauty and music all around — the savage, untamed beauty 
of sea and rock and cliff; and the more tender beauty of deep- 
sea pools here and there in the crevices — seapools, clear and green 
as the most fleckless emerald, and in their depths purple mol- 
lusks, whose deep, rich Tyrian dyes contrasted with the limpid 
water ; and wonderful algae of every shape and color, floating 
and coiling and waving their long, cool flags, as the wind rippled 
the waters around them. And lest there should be here aught 
to mar the freshness and sweetness and purity of these tiny lake- 
lets, twice a day the great mother-sea poured in her living waters 
in deep channels, and flushed the cisterns with foam, which melted 
into glittering globes and sweetened and purified the rock-wells 
down to their lowest depths. And sea-gulls gleamed white and 
gray above the surges ; and speckled sea-swallows dipped and 
flashed here and there from wave to rock, and from rock to wave. 

XXXV. 

There could be no solitude here, for voices were ever calling, 
calling to you ; and you had to shade your eyes from the glare of 
sunlit foam, that not only dazzled and blinded at your feet, but 
floated up in a kind of sea-dust that filled all the air with sun-mists, 
and was shot through and through with rainbows that melted and 
appeared again, and vanished as the sunlight fell or the wind 
caught the smoke of the breakers and flung it back against the 
steel-blue, darkened sea without. Far up along the coast, you 
could see the same glorious phenomenon — a fringe of golden 
foam breaking helplessly against iron barriers; and, here and 
there, where a great rock stood alone and motionless, cut loose 
from the mainland by centuries of attrition, you might behold 
cataract after cataract of molten gold pouring out and over it, 
covering it for a moment in the glittering sheet of waters, and 
then diminishing into threads of silver as the spent waves divided 
into tiny cataracts and fell. It was again the eternal war of Na- 
ture, the aggressive sea, flinging its tremendous tonnage of waters 
on the land ; and the patient rocks, washed and beaten and tor- 
tured, for ever turning their patient faces to the sea. 



246 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 



XXXVI. 

Why doesn't all the world come to Ireland at least for the few- 
days of quiet breathing and torpor which summer brings, and 
which even the most exacting Shylock of the modern world must 
allow? If I were a Crcesus-philanthropist, such as I have already 
described, I would take from out all the factories and workshops of 
the world those pale mechanics, those anaemic and wasted women, 
and bring them here. I would take them from the stifling atmos- 
phere where they breathe poison, and fill their lungs with the 
strong clean salt air from the sea. For the rumble and thunder 
of machinery I would give them the ever soothing sounds of 
winds and waves. For the smell of oil and rags, and the odors 
of streets and slums, I would give them the intoxicating perfume 
of winds odorous from their march over purple heather and yellow 
broom, and the subtle scents that breathe from seaweeds washed 
with brine, and exhaling its sweetness and strength. And I 
would say to them : Here, rest and forget ! Plunge in these 
breakers, sleep on this heathy hillock ; read, and pause, and 
think all day ! The cares of life have no place here ! They 
have " folded their tents like the Arabs." There is nothing over 
you here but the blue dome of Heaven, and the Eye of God 
looking through ! 

XXXVII. 

4 

The English have long ago discovered these nooks of 
paradise on the Irish coast. They have so completely mon- 
opolized one or two down there in the kingdom of Kerry that 
they feel quite resentful since the natives have found out those 
beauty spots, and are actually courageous enough to demand 
a right to share them. And here on this wild coast you 
will see a solitary Briton, a bewildered and almost panic-stricken 
mortal, pale-faced, thinly bearded, spectacled, with the field glass 
slung around his shoulders and something like an alpenstock in 
his hand. He looks rather fearfully around. He is outside civil- 
ization, and he does not know what is going to happen. He is 
quite astonished at the temerity of these young gentlemen in 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 247 

white flannels, and these young ladies in tennis costume, swinging 
their bats gaily, as they mount the declivity towards the broad 
plateau above the sea. By and by, his nerves cool down ; and if 
he can pick up courage enough to answer your kindly greetings, 
you will find him a bright, clear, intelligent soul. He is just 
come from the Bodleian, or the British Museum. The smell of 
books and mummies hangs around him. He, too, needs the sea! 

XXXVIII. ■ 

But all these bronzed and ruddy Irish, with health and life in 
every movement, feet that spring lightly from the turf, clean, 
ruddy bodies, as you see when they plunge from rock or spring- 
board and cut their way, like natives of the element, across the 
sea, what are they doing here ? Taking their holidays ? There 
are no holidays in Ireland ; for every day is a holiday. We take 
the best out of life, and laugh at the world pursuing its phantoms 
across the weary wastes bleached with the bones of the unsuccess- 
ful and the fallen. We don't teach the philosophy of the schools 
well; but we practise the philosophy of life perfectly. So 
thinks, evidently, my statuesque Englishman, whose nerves 
are somewhat startled by our exuberant spirits. So think these 
German lads, who, amazed at Irish generosity, believe the donors 
of these innumerable sixpences millionaires, although the donors 
may be as poor as themselves. So think these two lonely Italian 
brothers, who vend their pretty artistic paper-weights at fabulous 
prices. They are Garibaldians, if you please, brought up to be- 
lieve that a government of priests is the worst in the world. 
They have been beaten into orthodoxy by the old Irishwoman, 
who feeds them as if they were her own children, and thinks she 
has a right therefore to chastise their irreligion. But all carry 
back to their homes the idea that the Irish are the freest, gayest, 
most irresponsible people on the surface of the earth. 

XXXIX. 

It is evening here. The sun has just gone down over there 
towards America, with all the pomp and splendor of cloud cur- 



248 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

tains and aerial tapestries ; and the sea swings calm, acknowledging 
the prescriptive right of the vesperal-time to peace. The wealthy 
classes, who have just dined, the more modest people, who have 
just had tea, are all gathered pell-mell here before the handsome 
villas that crest the summit of these cliffs above the sea. Just 
here, inside the sea-wall, between two priests, sits an aged Arch- 
bishop, the weight of eighty winters bending his broad shoulders 
as he looks across the darkening bay and thinks of many things. 
Undeterred by rank or splendor, for there is a kind of glorious 
communion here, crowds of young lads and girls throng the sea- 
wall. A German band is playing Strauss and Waldteufel waltzes. 
But it is not dance music these Irish want. They demand the 
Lieder of the Fatherland. For every penny they give for a waltz, 
they will give sixpence for a German song. A young Bavarian, 
fair-haired, blue-eyed, will oblige them. And there, above the 
Atlantic surges, on this wild coast, the strange, sweet melodies, 
learned far away in some woodman's hut in the Black Forest, are 
entrancing: Irish hearts, which understand not a single articulate 
guttural or labial of the foreigners, but feel the magic of the music 
stealing their senses away. And then the strangers reciprocate. 
And a hundred voices sing : Come back to Erin, mavoumeen, 
mavourneen ! to the accompaniment of violoncello and bassoon. 



XL. 

Passing along the corridor of my hotel that night on the way 
to my own room I was accosted by a friend. After a few minutes' 
conversation he invited me to his room. Oysters and champagne? 
No. A game of nap ? No. A whole family, three generations 
of them, were gathered into the father's bedroom. They were 
saying their night-prayers before separating for the night. The 
aged grandmother was reciting the first decade of the Rosary as 
we entered. We knelt. When she had finished the decade, she 
looked around and said: "Alice, go out! " Alice was a tiny tot 
of seven summers. Grandmamma promptly took up the recitation, 
repeated the form of the meditation, as found in Catholic prayer- 
books, and slowly and sweetly " gave out " the decade to the end. 
The grandmother looked around again and called out : " Go on, 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 249 

Willy ! " Willy was the father, a gray-haired man of fifty-seven. 
To the mother's imagination he was but the child she carried in 
her arms half a century ago. Willy finished ; and the aged mistress 
of ceremonies called out, now a grandchild, now the mother, until 
all were finished. Then the children kissed " good-night ! " and 
departed. Across the yard, which is also garden, 

All night have the roses heard 

The flute, violin, bassoon ; 
All night has the casement jessamine stirred 

To the dancers dancing in tune. 

They kept me awake 

Till a silence fell with the waking bird 
And a hush with the setting moon. 

XLI. 

And this was the subject of my meditation the following 
morning, as I sat in my perch there above the sea. Here is the 
world's great secret solved. Here is the dream of the gentle 
mystic, Novalis, realized. Not that the scheme has yet rounded 
to absolute perfection here. The material and subordinate ele- 
ment has to be developed as yet to supplement the spiritual forces 
that are alive and active. But all the possibilities of such a per- 
fect scheme of human happiness as Novalis dreamed of, are here, — 
Nature with all her magic beauty, Art in embryo, but with every 
promise of speedy and perfect development, and Religion, holy 
and mysterious mother, overshadowing all. Comfort without 
wealth, perfect physical health without passion, ambition without 
cruelty, love without desire, the enjoyment of life without forget- 
fulness of eternity, the combination of temporal and spiritual 
interests, gaiety without levity, the laugh that never hurts, the 
smile that is never deceptive, — clean bodies, keen minds, pure 
hearts, — what better world can philosopher construct, or poet 
dream of? 

XLII. 

I choose this watering-place rather than the former as both the 
type and theatre of what we may expect, when some great con- 



250 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

structive spirit comes along from eternity to harmonize apparently- 
rival elements, and bring all into the perfect symmetry of a Civitas 
Dei in terra. Because here there was a leaven of worldliness 
and pleasure; there religion dominated and interpenetrated every- 
thing. The place seems more a shrine than a fashionable resort. 
If one did not know otherwise, he might mistake that lonely 
hamlet, undistinguished except for a few monster hotels, there on 
the brown moorland, seven miles from a railway station, and with 
only the thin sea-line in the distance, for a La Salette or a Lourdes. 
How otherwise shall you account for those gray-haired priests 
waiting from four o'clock this summer morning for the sacristy 
door to be opened ? How will you explain the constant succes- 
sion of Masses at five different altars from five o'clock to ten, each 
Mass followed by an immense and fervent congregation ? How 
will you interpret the constant stream of devout worshippers that 
passes into that church all day long, to make visits, follow the 
Stations of the Cross, recite the Rosary, etc. ? Pleasure-seekers 
and health-seekers, where are they ? God-seekers and soul- 
seekers rather, for never a mission or retreat was attended with 
such passionate fervor and piety as these well-dressed worshippers 
exhibit, as they seem to grudge the time at the spa or at the sea, 
or on the far cliffs, as so much stolen from God. 

XLIII. 

And just there, look ! Across that light of sea sleep the three 
islands that link us with the past, and whose traditions, were we 
otherwise, would shame us. They are Aran-na-naomh, Arran of 
the Saints, where rests the dust of thousands whose lives were 
heroic. You are at the end of civilization, and the beginning of 
heaven. There is not in the world so savage a spot as that where 
I stand. It is a huge plateau or shelf of limestone rock, pitted 
and marked by immense holes where the eternal rains have worn 
the soft limestone. Beneath my feet the devouring sea is thun- 
dering and bellowing through deep sea-caves where all the finny 
monsters of the sea might hide forever, and never be found. There 
is no gentleness here ! It is not 

The blind wave feeling round his long sea hall 
In silence 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 25 1 

you hear, but the savage waves leaping and tearing with aggres- 
sive fury through every vantage point created by their ceaseless 
and never-ending attacks. It is a place for the hermit and the 
saint ; and mark you ! O world-dreamer, and far-seer, the hermit 
and the saint must again resume their rightful places in the econ- 
omy of new orders and systems ! You cannot do without them. 
They symbolize the rest and the gracious peace which the world 
will ever stand in need of. 

XLIV. 

But here in this more fashionable place there is something more 
of the human element ; and it makes things more interesting to a 
student of humanity, although they may not reach such sublimity 
in idea or feeling. And as it is this commingling of the human 
and divine that will form the great principle or organic constituent 
of the commonwealth that is to be, it makes an apter subject for 
study than society where religion not only predominates, but is 
everything. For it is easy to solve the problem, Religion alone ; 
and it is easy to solve the problem, Humanity alone ! But to 
combine both in one great republic of reason, each fitting in and 
harmonizing with the other, with no repellent principles under- 
lying the structure of either, but both cooperating to develop 
all that is best in nature, and to eliminate all that is evil — here is 
the great problem to be solved by some master-mind under the 
distinctly unfavorable circumstances of modern European life ; or 
to be solved naturally from some such condition of society as that 
which we have described, and which seems to be the peculiar 
prerogative of this Catholic land of ours. 



XLV. 

I think all unbiased minds, anxious for this union of culture 
and religion, would choose this our country for the experiment. 
All conditions seem happily placed for the working-out of the 
gigantic problem. It would be no place certainly for a Voltairean 
scoffer ; for the omniscient, yet agnostic scientist, or for a modern 
Ibsenite, who would pin his faith to the prophets of naturalism. 



252 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

I am quite sure that if I were to place this book of Tolstoi's in 
the hands of any young girl who is now sitting on those crags 
that overhang the Atlantic, she would fling it into the sea before 
she had read a dozen pages. I am quite sure, if I told any of 
these ecclesiastics who mingle so freely amongst their people 
here, the story of Parson Brand, he would at once say that the 
stoning and subsequent interment of that idealist in an avalanche 
was richly deserved. For, somehow, eccentricities of any kind 
are laughed out of court here ; and for a sentimental people, it is 
wonderful how they have caught and retained the sense of that 
juste milieu that lies at the bottom of all reason and all order. 



XLVI. 

The two things that seem to have preserved the buoyancy of 
this people hitherto are the total absence of the habit of intro- 
spection, and their ignorance of the neurotic literature of the age. 
It is quite true that their feelings, with surprising and painful 
quickness, leap from depression to exaltation, and vice versa ; but 
this swift succession of feeling is emotional, and not intellectual. 
Except on the occasion of confession, in which they are strongly 
advised to be brief and definite, they never look inwards to 
scrutinize motives or impulses. They know nothing of psycho- 
logical analysis of themselves, and they are content to measure 
others by what they see, without desiring to unveil and pry into 
the hidden sanctuary where rests that Holy of Holies — the human 
soul ! And hence there can be no morbidity here. They look, 
like children, at the surfaces of things, and as these surfaces are 
mostly smooth, and it is only beneath there is the ruffling of 
tempests, they are content to take life even so, and say, All is 
revealed, and all is well ! 
■>- 

XLVII. 

It is a negative constituent of happiness, too, that hitherto 
they have never heard of the strange modern literature that, com- 
mencing with this morbid analysis of human thoughts and mo- 
tives, ends in revolting realism and dreary pessimism. They 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 253 

know nothing of the Weltschmerz, have never heard of Parson 
Manders or Rosmer Solness with his dreary verdict on his life : 
"As I look backwards, I have really built nothing, and sacrificed 
nothing to be able to build." Oswald Alving is as yet a stranger ; 
and happily the sculptor Rubek with his Irene and Maia are un- 
known names. They would not class the creator of such types 
with Shakspere, even if they knew them. In fact, they are a 
healthy people, and just as they never will be taught to appre- 
ciate high venison or rotten Stilton, so, too, they have not reached 
as yet that intellectual status where nerves seem to be everything, 
and healthy thought is not only unrefined but morbid. In fact, 
some one has called it : 

Mundus mundulus in mundo immundo. 



XLVIII. 

Will all this last ? Ah, there is the problem I am trying to 
solve here on this rock-shelf above the immaculate sea. Will not 
the Zeitgeist come along and seize these island people, as it has 
seized the world without ? How can we stop the process of the 
suns, or turn back the hand on the dial of time ? And if edu- 
cation has to advance, as it is advancing by leaps and bounds, 
must not the literature of introspection and bad nerves and 
pessimism creep in gradually, and affect the whole mental and 
moral life of the country ? And then, what becomes of your 
physical and spiritual health, and the beautiful happy balance and 
poise of faculties, neither enervated by disease nor warped by 
intellectual misdirection ? It is a big problem ; and push it as far 
back as we like, it will loom up suddenly some day, and demand 
a solution ; or an unmolested influence, such as we see unhappily 
bearing bitter fruit in other and less favored lands. 

XLIX. 

It is hard to imagine such a revolution in a nation's ideas as 
this supposes ; and, as I study this strange people, here in their 
humid climate and surrounded by a misty and melancholy ocean ; 



254 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

as I see them watching dreamily the sunsets over the western 
ocean, as only a poetic people may ; dancing in ball-rooms to- 
night until twelve o'clock ; reverently worshipping at the morning 
Mass ; returning to their hotels, dripping brine from dress and 
hair ; spending the day in excursions and amusements, but always 
ending it in the parish church ; and, as I think you cannot move 
in any circle of society here, or change your location, or stir hand 
or foot without coming bolt upright against God ; I conclude that 
a genius so varied and exalted will never long suffer itself to be 
linked with the spirit of the age or any other spirit of darkness, 
but will always rise above mere materialism on the wings of the 
poetic idea, and always keep within touch of reality through its 
moral and religious instinct. I doubt if Ireland will ever produce 
an Amiel, or a Senancour, or a Rousseau. 



L. 

But the Man of Letters will come ; and the Man of Letters will 
always set himself in opposition to what he is pleased to designate 
sacerdotalism. Literature and dogma have never yet been taught 
to go hand in hand. For Literature has a dogmatic influence of 
its own ; and believes its highest form to be the didactic. Unlike 
Art, whose central principle is " Art for its own sake alone," 
Literature assumes and has assumed in all ages, but more espe- 
cially in modern times, the privilege of " guide, philosopher, and 
friend " to the world. Hence, we find that the worst forms of 
literature are excused on the ground that they teach a lesson. 
" Anna Karenina," " Resurrection," " Ghosts," " Lourdes," 
" Rome," " Paris," are all sermons, told with all the emphasis, 
not of voice and accent, but of a horrible realism that affects one's 
nerves more terribly than the most torrential eloquence. And 
now that literature is pledged to preaching, it is doubtful if it 
ever will drop the role. And so the Man of Letters will come 
to Ireland, as he has come to France, to England, to Germany, 
and with him the seven other spirits, Zeitgeist, Weltschmerz, etc., 
to abide and take up their home, or to be exorcised and banished 
summarily and forever ! 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 255 

LI. 

And all the spirits have one enemy, and but one — the spirit of 
religion. This was the L Infame of Voltaire, who dreaded it so 
much that he would banish from his republic of atheism even the 
ancillary arts of poetry and music and painting. Everything 
that savored of idealism, and appealed to aught but the senses, 
was ruthlessly ostracized. The fight in that unhappy country of 
his between the man of letters and the priest, between literature 
and dogma, lasts to this day, with such lurid manifestations, as 
French Revolutions, Carmagnoles, etc. Then came the man of 
letters in the shape of the scientist, also banishing from human 
thought everything that savored of the ideal, everything that 
could not be peered at in a microscope, or examined in a test- 
tube. He has passed, too, but left his mark on the religious tone 
of England. Now comes the man of letters, with his religion of 
humanity, from the steppes of Russia to the Scandinavian moun- 
tains, and thence to the mud-dykes of Holland; and he, too, 
comes in the name of religion, with priests and ritual and cere- 
monies — above all, with dogma — the dogma that man is supreme, 
and there is no one like him in heaven or on earth. 



LII. 

And I can forecast the time when this people of destiny, 
here by the wild seas of the north, and right in the gangway of 
the modern world, will have to face and examine the dogma of 
this modern literature. Nay, I can even see certain vacillations 
and soul-tremblings under the magic of the sweet and delicious 
music of language, attuned and attenuated in accordance with 
the canons of modern, perfect taste. But I know that the sturdy 
character of the people, stubborn after their eight hundred years of 
fight, and their religious instincts which nothing can uproot, and 
their power of adapting all that is best in life with all that is use- 
ful for eternity, and, above all, their sense of humor, will help 
them, after the first shock, to vibrate back towards their tradi- 
tional and historical ideals, and finally settle down into the perfect 
poise of reason and religion combined. They never will accept 



256 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

literature as dogma; but they may turn the tables, and make 
their dogmatic beliefs expand into a world-wide literature. 



LIII. 

That is just the point. Can literature be made our ally, as 
it has hitherto been our enemy? Are literature and Catholic 
dogma irreconcilable? He would be a bold man who would 
assert it, with Calderon and Dante before his eyes. But we do 
not sufficiently realize and understand that poetry, romance, ait 
— everything that idealizes, is on our side. If Voltaire banished 
from the republic of letters everything that savored of chivalry, 
enthusiasm, poetry, heroism, it is quite clear that these must have 
been recognized as the allies of religion. And when the inevita- 
ble reaction took place, one by one these ambassadors were 
recalled, and at length religion was accepted and enthroned 
in the very places where she had abdicated or been expelled. So, 
Walter Scott's Waverly Novels prepared the way for the Trac- 
tarian Movement, and became its initial impulse; and Tieck, 
Novalis, the Schlegels, who formed the romantic school in Ger- 
many, prepared men's minds for Catholicism by recalling the 
ancient glories that filled every city of Europe with churches 
and cathedrals, and the galleries of Italy with priceless and im- 
mortal art. 



LIV. 

Just as I scratched these words in pencil in a note-book, I 
became aware of a figure beneath me, standing in a hesitating way 
on a great shelf of rock that sloped down into a crystal pool of 
sea-water. It was a young student, and I thought : " He wants 
to bathe, and no wonder. Yonder bath of crystalline purity, 
improvised by Mother Nature, would tempt a hydrophobic patient. 
He is shy about disrobing in my presence, so I will leave him 
alone with the luxury." No ! he didn't want to bathe. He wanted 
a chat. Might he take the liberty, etc., etc. ? By all means. He 
was very young, but I am not one of those who believe that to be 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 2$7 

a young man is a crime. If the ideas of youth have not an autum- 
nal mellowness, at least they have all the freshness and elasticity 
of spring. It is good and wholesome to talk with the young, not 
for what they may learn, but for what they impart. It is good to 
see young hopes unfolding, and young ambitions ripening, and 
young eyes looking boldly and unflinchingly along the road 
which we have trodden, where we have leaped some pitfalls and 
fallen into others, and have now very little left of the weary journey 
but its dust, and sweat, and languor. And my young friend was 
buoyant. He wanted to know everything, and to try everything. 
The red light of the dawn was on his wings, as he tried to soar in 
the empyrean. 

LV. 

All was on his side — youth, enthusiasm, health, hope ; he felt 
he lacked but one thing — knowledge. Not wisdom, mind ! What 
youth ever deemed he lacked wisdom ? But he felt there were 
certain things hidden from him, and but dimly revealed ; and he- 
wanted to tear away the veil and see them in all their naked truth. 
He intended leaving Ireland and going abroad. It did not matter 
where. He wanted work, and arduous work, and difficulties and 
trials. Otherwise he could never find his manhood. Missionary 
life in Ireland is merely running a knife through a cheese. You 
couldn't call that work — could you, now ? But he felt — he was 
modest enough to admit it — that the difficulties he sought to con- 
front and conquer were of an intricate nature, inasmuch as they 
sprang from souls ; and he was reverent enough to say that man's 
soul, be it the soul of a poet or a hind, is a kind of Holy of Holies 
only to be approached with a certain awe, and, above all, with the 
shoes off the feet, by which I think he meant purity of intention. 
And, furthermore, as it was not likely that he would go amongst 
savages to teach them to wear blankets and abstain from roast 
baby-fingers, he thought that the souls he wished to conquer 
might need reasoning with, if one were ever to understand the 
crypts and labyrinths that wind their dark and devious ways 
through modern human thought. 



258 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 



LVI. 

Would it not be well, then, to make a study of such souls ; to 
try to understand them ; above all, to get on to their standpoint 
and to see through their eyes ? How do they regard us ? How 
do they deal with all those complex situations in which men will 
find themselves, in spite of every effort to keep themselves free or 
disentangle themselves ? And surely, if progress means passing 
out from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and if this is the 
most progressive of ages, the multitude of thoughts that vex, 
emotions that stir, principles that guide, passions that mislead, 
must be beyond counting. But these we can never understand, 
so utterly different are our own surroundings, unless we have the 
faculty of going out of ourselves and entering the minds of others. 
Experience alone can thoroughly teach this; but experience of 
this kind comes to one priest in a million. How, then, shall we 
know these secrets ? Well, the literature of a world is the mind 
of the world placed articulately before us. Literature is the 
world's general confession, because it is the revelation of certain 
minds, which owe all their success to the fact that they have 
caught up the spirit of the age and rendered its voiceless agony 
articulate. 

LVII. 

Now, the malady of this age is Ennui — the eternal getting 
tired of, and wearying of monotony — in religion, art, science, and 
literature itself. Heresy is ennui of the sameness of rite, ceremo- 
nial, and prayer. Hence we see many who have entered the 
Church from emotional or aesthetic impulses very soon tire of 
such monotony and drift back to the "variety theatre" of their 
youth. Furthermore, infidelity is the delight of despair. There 
is a certain paroxysm of pride in defying or denying God. Milton 
has put it in the souls of the rebel angels. It is the ecstasy of 
the lost. Dante never understood it. Hence, amongst all his 
reprobate, there are no defiant souls. All are despairful, or ad- 
mit the justice of their punishment. Why? Because infidelity 
did not exist in Dante's time ; and to his great Catholic mind it 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 259 

was inconceivable. But if any Dante or Milton could arise now, 
he could impersonate another phase of the malady in the ennuyes 
and the defiant. Yes, the passion for change and the revolt of 
the intellect are amongst the many symptoms of this overwrought 
and frenzied age. 

LVIII. 

It is one of the reasons, my young student-friend, why theories 
and systems are always acceptable to the human mind ; dogmas, 
never ! The former place no shackles on the intellect. You can 
move easily to and fro beneath them, or cast them aside alto- 
gether. But dogma binds the intellect, and the intellect chafes 
beneath it. You must break the neck of non serviam ! before 
the head bows beneath the keystone of the arch. And, strangely 
enough, this is just what modern science, nay, even what modern 
literature is doing, it may be unconsciously. The man of letters 
is the Samson of the New Revolution. He preaches man's 
perfectibility, and shouts liberty, fraternity, equality, whilst al- 
lowing his axe to fall on his unhappy victims. And the world 
will one day wake from the horrid dream, and demand a return 
to common sense, and a sane understanding of man's relations 
with the universe. The hermits in the deserts of science must be 
also visionaries ; and the apparitions are for the most part diabolic. 

LIX. 

What, then, have we to teach the world, that is, if the world 
will condescend to listen ? Simply a return to common sense 
and a little repose of the spirit. To this end, men must seek God 
and Nature a little more ; self and society a little less. The great 
Master and Model, after His day's labor in the squalid towns, or 
along the dusty roads of Judea, went up at night into the moun- 
tains to pray. Even He sought solitude as a balm and sedative 
for tired brain and nerves. Hence I hold that monasticism sprang 
from a necessity of nature, as well as from the decree of God. The 
deserts of Nitria and Libya were little paradises of peace after the 
maddening whirl and excitement of Greek or Roman cities. 
But, even in the desert, even here, my young student-friend, be- 



260 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

side the barren sea, we must keep away from analysis and intro- 
spection, and maintain our souls on the perfect poise which we 
witness everywhere in nature. Mark the swing of that sea, the 
return of that star. All is obedient to law. There is no liberty 
anywhere. The tides are chained to the moon ; the star runs in 
its appointed groove. They do not ask the why or the where- 
fore. They are content with their equilibrium. Why should 
man's mind alone be lawless and untamed ? 



LX. 

My young student didn't quite see the bearing of the parallel 
on the question he had originally propounded. But he will later 
on. He went his way, I am afraid, dissatisfied. And imme- 
diately beneath me, fifty feet or so, and on the shelf of rock where 
I had seen him, stood a youth and a young girl. They were 
conversing earnestly. And then the former knelt on the rock, 
and with some sharp instrument cut deep into the stone, his com- 
panion watching intently. They, too, went their ways ; and I was 
curious enough to see what he had cut in the rock. It was a 
circle within which were the magic letters A and R. It was the 
first act in a little drama. Next morning we were horrified at 
breakfast to hear that a young law-student from Dublin had just 
been drowned in the bay. He had been an expert swimmer, had 
slept late, and essayed to swim across the neck of waters that 
connected the inner bay with the ocean. He had been seen to 
cross half way over, then to fling up his hands and sink. There 
was no help at hand. All the great swimmers had gone back to 
their hotels. 

LXI. 

There was great gloom all day over the little place. In the 
evening I was in my usual perch in the cliffs. The sun was set- 
ting amidst all the gorgeous magnificence of a clouded but not 
darkened sky. One solitary figure fifty feet beneath me watched 
it. Then I saw that infinitely pathetic human gesture, the secret 
wiping away of a tear. She turned, and bending down she traced 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 261 

with the sharp end of her parasol the letters on the rock, and 
then the round circle that clasped them, several times. There 
was no mistaking Act II in the little drama. " Here last evening 
we stood, and here, etc., etc. And now I am alone, and he — ." 
An hour later I entered the parish church to say my evening 
prayer. My student was making the Stations of the Cross ; and 
the young bereaved one was kneeling at the feet of Christus 
Consolator. I did not hear a word. But I knew what she was 
saying. They were the words of Martha and Mary. " Lord, if 
Thou hadst been there ! But now I know that whatever Thou 
askest of God, He will grant Thee." What did she want ? His 
poor body was out at sea, half-eaten by the sharks. That she 
should never see more. What then ? What these Irish, student 
or soul-friend, seem to be ever dreaming about — One Soul ! 

LXII. 

Here was a direct exemplification of that saying of Novalis : 
"Absolute love, independent of the heart, and grounded upon 
faith, is religion. Love can pass through absolute will, into re- 
ligion. We become worthy of the highest being only through 
death, atoning death." To a superficial mind it sounds sentimen- 
tal. We must understand how deeply those mystics felt, as well as 
how serenely they thought, before we can see the occult meanings 
that lie deep down beneath their expressions of feeling, or the 
embodiments of their ideas. In all cases, they seem to have 
thought with the heart rather than with the brain. Their ideas 
came forth not cut, chiselled, and chilled by mere mental evolu- 
tion, but rough and warm from the mould of the deep sympathy 
that lay between them and nature and God. Nor is this emo- 
tionalism by any means foreign to the spirit of religion. Nay, 
rather it is its spirit and its form. The absence of natural affection is 
considered by St. Paul one of the distinguishing characteristics of 
Paganism ; and he who had earned that most illustrious of all 
titles, " the beloved disciple," and whose picture by Albrecht 
Diirer of Nurnberg is taken to be an exact portrait of Novalis, is 
also the apostle of love. There is something in it after all, and 
cold intellectualism might do well to study its effects and mani- 



262 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

festations. How well it would be for us all if we could believe, 
in his own spirit of splendid optimism, with Novalis, that " love is 
the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe." 

LXIII. 

I have always to undergo a certain species of humiliation 
when I return home from the autumn holidays. People will ask : 
" Where did you go this year ? " And I have to answer: " Only to 
Kilkee or Tramore ! " Some gentle and modest questioner will 
say : " I hope you enjoyed yourself and had good weather." But 
there is a large and ever-growing class, who, when they receive 
that reply, suddenly drop or change the conversation, as if it were 
too painful to be pursued. You know them well. They are the 
world-explorers or globe-trotters, who have climbed the Pyramids 
and seen the Iceland geysers ; who have glimpsed the interiors of 
the Lamaseries of Thibet, and visited Siberian prisons ; who have 
wondered (that is, if they can wonder at anything) at the giant 
recumbent statue of Buddha in Ceylon, and read Aztec inscrip- 
tions in the ruined temples of Mexico ; and to whom a dash at 
Constantinople or Cairo, or a run across the States to Vancouver, 
is considered a mere preliminary canter to a six-months' holiday 
across the planet. They are formidable folk to meet; and 
modest people shrink away into a kind of coveted annihilation, 
until they get beyond the shadow of such experienced and 
ubiquitous neighbors. 

LXIV. 

There is a minor species of travelled people, however, who 
are more intolerant, and intolerable. They are the less enterpris- 
ing, but more impressive holiday-makers, who are modest enough 
to admit that they have only climbed Mont Blanc and seen the 
Passion-Play ; but who always ask you with a singular kind of 
pitiful contempt : " Is it possible you have never seen Spain ? 
Really now you ought to go to Spain ! " And you feel very humble, 
and indeed half-criminal ; and you then and there resolve that 
your ultimate salvation depends on your having seen Spain, and that 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 263 

you must make the attempt, if it costs your life. And you regard 
these experienced people with a kind of admiring wonder ; and 
think how unhappily nature has dealt with you in not inspiring 
you with such glorious and profitable ambitions ; and endowing 
you instead with a kind of hopeless inertia, that makes the pack- 
ing of a trunk, or the purchase of a Cook's ticket, a work to be 
dreaded and shunned. You admit how feebly you are equipped 
for life's serious work ; and you make a desperate resolution that, 
come what will, you will see Spain and, — no, or die ! 



LXV. 

On more sober reflection, however, and when the awful sense 
of your inferiority has vanished, you may be disposed to reflect ; 
and reflecting to ask yourself, Is travelling abroad really essential 
to existence ? or to health and long life ? or to education ? And 
is it some innate or congenital defect in your own nature that 
creates that repugnance to going abroad for your holidays ? For 
really, it is just there that self-contempt comes in. And, as you 
reflect, you probably will recall the case of the vast multitudes 
who never leave their own country, nay, their own village, or town- 
land; and whose lives are quite as laborious as yours. Here are 
nuns, for example, who for fifty years have never gone outside 
these convent walls ; who have seen the same little span of sky, 
the same little patch of stars, during all that time ; whose lives 
have been lives of unremitting labor, and who now, in the evening 
of life, take as cheerful an outlook over life and eternity as the 
most philosophical, or rather eupeptic, optimist. They listen to 
all recitals of foreign travels with a certain amount of interest, 
but without much envy. They have been content to live, to work, 
and are content to die. And they have never known, even for a 
moment, that sensation of ennui which will attack people in the 
hotels of Cairo, or the seraglios of Stamboul. Clearly then, 
travelling abroad is not an essential of existence, or even of 
health. 



264 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LXVL 

Then, again, here are three or four thousand people in this 
remote parish, whose lives, too, are draped in the same sober 
monotone of place and scene and unintermittent toil ; and some- 
how they never think it a necessity of existence to leave their 
homes, and see strange faces and foreign climes. And they 
live, and have perfect health and nerves and spirits, and thank 
God for His blessings, nay even for His visitations, when He 
does come to them under the disguise of sorrow. Moreover, our 
forefathers and our predecessors who had the same class of 
work to accomplish, with greater labor and more worries, 
never dreamed of an autumn holiday in France or Spain. And 
they lived to ripe old age, and dropped peacefully into peaceful 
graves. Ah, but ! we get depressed, and the springs of all mental 
and bodily activity get dulled or broken, and the doctor says : 
" You must really go abroad and see strange faces and live under 
different circumstances, and pick up fresh elasticity of spirits by 
change, change ! " Alas ! it is the eternal question of nerves 
again. Nervous irritability is genius; nervous ennui, heresy; 
nervous literature, Ibsens and Maeterlincks ; and one and only 
one remedy, — which is never more than a palliative, for the 
disease is deep-rooted — and that is change, change, change ! 

LXVII. 

But education ? Is not travel here at least an essential ? This, 
too, may be doubted. How very few celebrities, after all, made 
the " grand tour " ! Did Shakspere or Spencer cross the English 
Channel ? Of those who did venture aboard in those days, how 
many repeated the experiment ? Even in our times, let it be 
remembered that Byron and Shelley, Landor and Browning, were 
voluntary exiles, not travellers ; and that if George Eliot could 
not get on without her annual trip to the Continent, Tennyson on 
the other hand rarely ventured from home. And Carlyle — ah ! 
Carlyle, what it cost him to leave even his unhappy home at 
Chelsea, and get away amongst friends who were prepared to put 
pillows of roses under his nerve-distracted head ! How he fumed 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 26$ 

and raged till he got back to his own dismal quarters again ! 
And the two or three continental trips ! Ach Gott ! as he would 
say. Here is a specimen : 

" We got to Putbus, doing picturesquely the way. A beau- 
tiful Putbus indeed ! where I had such a night as should be long 
memorable to me ; big loud hotel, sea-bathing, lodgers with their 
noises, including plenteous coach-horses under my window, fol- 
lowed by noises of cats, brood-sows, and at 2 p.m. by the simul- 
taneous explosion of two Cochin-China cocks, who continued to 
play henceforth, and left me what sleep you can fancy in such 
quarters. . . . Adieu ! Keil Kissen, sloppy, greasy victual, all 
cold, too, especially the coffee and tea. Adieu, Teutschland! 
Adieu, travelling altogether, now and forevermore ! " 

LXVIII. 

Really, this kind of thing reconciles you to your lot, if you 
are unable, or unwilling, to leave your own land. And if you have 
the least experience in travelling, and understand ever so little of 
its worries and annoyances, even in these days of luxury, you be- 
gin to think, that except for the extremely mercurial, who cannot 
sit still, and the extremely depressed, who require frequent change, 
the game is hardly worth the candle. For after all, in the whole of 
Europe this moment, how many things are there which you would 
really like to see ? I do not say, how many places and things are 
there which you would like to be able to boast you saw. But 
how many things, persons, places, do you really covet with the 
eyes of your imagination ? Lord Bacon gives you a handsome 
list for selection. He tells every traveller what he ought to see. 
Here is the list : " The courts of princes, especially when they 
give audience to ambassadors ; the courts of justice, while they 
sit and hear causes ; ecclesiastical consistories ; the churches and 
monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant ; the 
walls and fortifications of cities and towns ; havens and harbors, 
antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, disputations, and lectures ; 
shipping and navies ; houses and gardens of state and pleasure 
near great cities ; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, 
bourses, warehouses, exercises of horsemanship, fencing, soldiers 



266 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

and the like ; comedies; treasures of jewels and robes; cabinets 
and rarities ; and to conclude, whatever is memorable in the places 
where they go." 

LXIX. 

Of all of these, about nine-tenths, I should say, are inaccessi- 
ble to the ordinary traveller. Of those that are accessible, I con- 
fess the churches and monasteries alone would interest me ; and 
one thing more, which the writer has omitted, — the haunts and 
graves of great men. The room in the Roman College where 
St. Aloysius died would have more attraction for me than the 
Forum ; and the places consecrated by the presence and minis- 
trations of that sweet saint, Philip Neri, would drag me away 
from the spot where the mighty Caesar fell. I would of course 
visit the Colosseum, but I would see only the mangled remains 
of the young Christian athletes and virgins whose limbs were rent 
asunder down there in its arena for the name of Christ. And I 
would see it by moonlight also, but only to observe the shadowy 
figures who steal through the dark aisles and gather for sacred 
burial these hallowed remains. I would not give one precious 
quarter of an hour that I might spend in the Sacred Catacombs, 
to study the ruins of Pcestum, or trace the broken splendors of 
Hadrian's villa ; but I would rise with the dawn to be able to say 
Mass in that Mamertine prison, where the great apostles were 
incarcerated, and where they baptized their gaolers with the water 
of that miraculous spring that flows there in the dark beneath my 
feet. 

LXX. 

But education ? We are wandering a little, as befits the sub- 
ject. Travelling is essential to education ? Perhaps so. But the 
most one can ever hope to extract from a travelled man is the 
exclamation : I saw that ! For example : 

You. — " The Parthenon which after so many thousand years 
is yet the noblest temple — " 

Traveller. — " Oh, yes ! we saw the Parthenon, and the Acrop- 
olis ! " 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 267 

You. — " It cannot be any longer maintained that the Moorish 
or Saracenic influence was hostile to the arts of civilization when 
that magnificent relic of their architecture, the Alhambra— " 

Traveller. — " The Alhambra ! Oh we saw the Alhambra ! 
'Twas lovely ! " 

You. — "And so if you want to see at their best Fountains' or 
Melrose — " 

Traveller. — " Oh, yes ! We were there. We saw both ! 
They are exquisite ! " 

You. — "I was just saying that if you want to see Fountains' 
or Melrose, visit them by moonlight. And you shall never know 
the vastness and sublimity of the Colosseum, until you startle the 
bats at midnight from its drapeiy of ivy, and — " 

Traveller. — " Oh, yes ! That's Byron, you know ! No, Scott ! 
Let me see : 

If you would see the — hem — aright, 
Visit it by the pale moonlight. 

" Isn't that it ? No ? Well, then, 'twas Byron who said : 
' Whilst stands the Colosseum,' etc., etc." 

Who does not remember those two little girls whom Ruskin 
has pilloried forever in his Fors Clavigera, — who read trashy 
novels, and eat sugared lemons all the way between Venice and 
Verona, and whose only remarks on the scenery and associations 

were : 

" Don't those snow-caps make you cool ? " 
" No— I wish they did." 

Are they types ? 



LXXI. 

Ah, but the memory of people, places, scenes, you have be- 
held ! Isn't that worth preserving ? Yes ! I make the conces- 
sion candidly. You have hit the bull's-eye this time. The 
memory of travel is the real gain and blessing of travel, just as 
our memories of youth, and middle-age, have a charm which our 
experiences did not possess. It is a curious fact and well worth 
investigating. Sitting here by the fireside, the eye of memory 



268 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

travels with an acute, and a certain kind of pathetic pleasure, over 
all the accidents and vicissitudes of our long journey. How little 
it makes of the worries and embarrassments ; how greatly it en- 
hances the pleasures. You smile now at the inconveniences of 
that long, dusty, tiresome railway journey, which you thought 
would never end ; at the incivility of the porters or waiters, who 
contemptuously passed you by for greater folk ; at the polite 
rudeness of the hotel-keeper, who told you at twelve o'clock at 
night, when you stumbled half-dazed from the railway carriage, 
that he had not a single room available ; at the long avenue of 
waiters and waitresses who filed along the hotel corridor at your 
departure expectant of much backsheesh, and ungrateful for lit- 
tle ; at the cold of Alpine heights, and the heat of Italian cities in the 
dog-days ; at the little black-eyed beggar who served your Mass 
for a bajocco, and turned somersaults at the altar free gratis; at 
the crush and the crowd, and the hustling and the elbowing in 
St. Peter's ; at the awful extortions, made with the utmost polite- 
ness, by those charming and intolerable natives; of the eternal 
peculation by the bland and smiling officials, etc., etc. 

LXXII. 

And you recall, with a pleasure you never felt in the ex- 
perience, the long, amber-colored ranges of snow-clad mountains 
sweeping into sight as the train rushes through horrid gorges, or 
creeps slowly up some Alpine spur that slopes its declivities to meet 
the demands of science ; the vast vistas of snow-white palaces above 
the ever-blue Mediterranean ; the long days spent in the cool 
galleries face to face with immortal paintings; the twilight of 
great churches with all their half-veiled splendors of marbles and 
pictures ; that evening, when you watched the sun set across the 
Val d'Arno, and the strange blue twilight crept down before it, 
deepened into the purple black of the night ; the hour you spent 
above the graves of Shelley and Keats beneath the pyramid of 
Caius Cestius ; that organ recital in the great Italian Cathedral, 
when you thought you saw the heavens opened and the angels 
ascending and descending ; the shock and terror at the sudden 
rocking of the earth at Sorrento ; the cool quadrangle in the 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 269 

Dominican Convent, the play of the fountain, and the white-robed 
monks in the gallery overhead ; the home-coming ; the sight of 
ruddy English faces instead of the dusky, black-eyed Greek or 
Italian ; the unpacking of your treasures ; the steady settling down 
into the old groove of life, and the resumption of ancient habits 

LXXIII. 

There is no doubt but that here is pleasure, deep, unalloyed 
pleasure, independent of the vanity of being able to say : I was 
there ! How do you account for it ? Thus, my travelled friend ! 
You see, wherever you went, you yourself were part and parcel 
of all you saw and felt, and you cast the shadow of self over all. 
And even a Lucretian philosopher will admit that self is the ever- 
present trouble, dimming and darkening all eternal splendors of 
space and time, and mingling its own bitter myrrh of thought and 
feeling with the brightest and most sparkling wine of life. Yes, 
you were worried here, and fretted there ; the memory of your 
little annoyance was fresh, and you took it with you ; and here 
you were the victim of weariness and ennui, and you sang Home, 
sweet home! in your heart. And your fellow-travellers, you re- 
member, were sometimes disagreeable. You did not get on well 
together. It was all their fault, of course ; they were so horribly 
impatient, and even ignorant. What pleased you, displeased 
them. You would have wished to linger over that immortal 
canvas, which you knew you would never see again ; or you 
would have liked to try your imperfect Italian on that laughing 
little nigger who rolled out his musical language so softly as 
he twisted the macaroni between his dirty fingers ; but you were 
hurried on, on by your friends, and you found it hard to forgive 
them. They wanted to linger over dainty goods in shop- windows 
here and there, or to listen to a barrel organ. You said, very 
naturally : Can't they see and hear these things at home ? Why 
do such people ever travel abroad ? 

LXXIV. 

That, too, is simple of explanation. They have splendid 
physical health, and no minds worth speaking of. They cannot 



270 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

rest at home, just as the untamed animal spirits of a boy will not 
permit him to sit still for a moment. Now, Nature is a most even 
and impartial mother. She doles out her gifts with rigid im- 
partiality. She has given some the affluence of great health and 
spirits, unburdened by imagination and unstinted by reflection. 
To others (shall we say they are her favorites?) she gives the 
superior gifts of mentality, with all the divine gloom and de- 
pression that invariably accompany them. The former, mercurial 
in temperament, race across Europe, dip here and there in some 
antique fountain of art or literature, but instantly shake off the 
dreaded beads of too much thought; attend great ceremonies; 
enjoy the three-hours' dinner at some palatial hotel ; are noisy 
and communicative, and happy. They return fresh from their 
travels to tell their acquaintances : " We have been there ! Really, 
now, you must go ! " The others, if they can shake off the phys- 
ical inertia which always accompanies and balances mental irrita- 
bility, glide softly through Europe, linger over the spots sanctified 
by genius, spend quiet, dreamy hours in cool, shady galleries, 
avoid the big hotels, watch Nature in silence and the solitude of 
their hearts, and return to the winter fireside to embody in novel, 
or poem, their experiences, doubly hallowed in the light of 
memory. These are the men that make you despair, for they 
have the second-sight, the vision that rises with the dawn and 
haunts them till the dusk. 



LXXV. 

This enchantment of memory is really much the same as the 
enchantment of art. A beautiful picture gives you more pleasure 
than the beautiful reality it represents. You dare not say it is 
greater, or more perfect, or more true than Nature ; but you feel 
greater pleasure in the contemplation of it than in the vision of the 
reality. Why ? Because you are not a part of it. You see it 
from the outside. Your personality forever jarring with itself and 
more or less out of tune, is not projected athwart it. You are a 
something apart ; and you see it as a something that has no con- 
nection whatsoever with you. Hence its peace, its calm, its truth, 
are soothing and restful. Or, if there be figures in the picture, or 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 27 1 

something dramatic and striking, for terror or for pathos, they 
do not touch you with any emotion but that of curiosity 
and pleasure. You are in a theatre, and this is the stage ; but 
the drama cannot touch you. That picture-frame, like that drop- 
scene, cuts you away from the representation. You are a spec- 
tator, not an actor. But in real life you cannot remain a spec- 
tator. Would to Heaven you could ! You will have touched 
the great secret of all human philosophy when you have brought 
to your mind, in its daily and hourly action, the conviction that 
" Life is a stage, and all men players and actors thereon." But 
this is impossible and undesirable. You must play your own 
part, and it is mostly a tragic and solemn one. 

LXXVI. 

This is the great secret of the happiness of childhood. Chil- 
dren are unconscious of themselves. They refer nothing to them- 
selves. They hear of life, its vast issues, its tragedies, its trials, its 
weight of sorrows ; but they can never for a moment believe that 
such things can affect themselves. The little things that do trouble 
them, they pass lightly over and forget. The little injustices that 
are done them they immediately condone. They have not as yet 
begun to refer all things in heaven and earth to themselves. They 
regard them as no part of their personality. Life is a picture — 
a pretty picture in a gilt frame. It is a gorgeous drama, where 
they can sit in the pit, or the boxes, according to their position in 
life, and look on calmly at Blue Beard and his wives or the 
madness of Ophelia, or the smothering of Desdemona, while 
they crunch their caramels, or smear their faces with sugared fruit. 
Life is a pretty spectacle, created specially for their amusement. 
If any one were to say: "There are Blue Beards yet in the world, 
and you may yet be a wife ; or, you may yet be an Ophelia, 
and carry around you bundles of rue ; or, you may encounter 
your Iago, and have your handkerchief stolen ; " that child 
would laugh incredulously into your face. Unconsciousness and 
unbelief, or rather, all-trusting faith in its immunity from sin and 
sorrow, are the glorious charters of childhood ; as they are also 
symptoms of perfect, unbroken health. 



272 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LXXVII. 

The first moment of unrest, or subjectivity, or reference to 
ourselves, is the first moment also that marks our entrance on the 
stage of life ; and it marks also the first step towards our failure. 
The unconscious actor is the greatest and the most perfect. Is it 
not a maxim of the stage : Lose your own personality in the per- 
son you represent ? If you are introspective, or self-examining, 
or curious to know what the audience is thinking of you, you will 
soon hear hisses and tumultuous condemnation. Just as in spirit- 
ual life, the secret not only of sanctity but of happiness, is aban- 
donment of self, and repose in God, so in our mere earthly life 
we must abandon ourselves to our inspirations, or fail. The poet 
who tries to be a poet, will never be a poet. He may be an art- 
ist, or polisher, or filer of sentences and phrases ; but he will 
always lack the higher afflatus. The saint who thinks he is a 
saint, ceases to be a saint. The patriot who begins to ask, how 
the welfare of his country will affect himself, ceases then and 
there to be a patriot. All great work is unconscious, and above 
all, unegotistical. The moment it becomes conscious, it becomes 
mechanical ; and you can never turn a mechanic into a creator. 
Hence when critics say that Tennyson was an artist before he be- 
came a poet, they imply that he never became a poet. For there 
never was a truer saying than the old trite one : Poeta nascitur. 
He may bury his gift, and stifle his creative powers, and become 
a Poietes apoietes ; but his is a birthright that can never be bought 
or sold. 

LXXVIII. 

There is another great advantage in this reserve of foreign 
travel. Something as yet remains unrevealed. Remember that 
ennui is the disease of modern life ; and that ennui is simply 
the repletion of those who have tasted too speedily, or too freely, 
at the banquet of life. Unhappy is the man who has parted with 
all his illusions ; and such is he in a most special manner, who 
has seen all things, and tried all, and found all wanting. For the 
first view, the first experience, is the poetry of existence. And 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 273 

poetry, like reverence, will not tolerate familiarity. You won't rave 
about Alps, or Apennines, the second time you see them. You 
have acquired knowledge, and lost a dream. Now, the dream for- 
ever remains for one who has not seen but believed. The mys- 
tery, the wonder, the charm, are yet before him. He may yet see 
and be glad. Earth and sea hold all their miracles in reserve for 
him. He cannot sit down in middle age, and say : " I have seen 
all things beneath the sun ; and lo ! all is vanity !" No ! he will 
not say that, so long as the bright succession of the world's won- 
ders may yet file before him. He has always a reserve ; and sinks 
even into his grave with all the hope and fascination, all the 
glamor and straining eyes of inexperience. 



LXXIX. 

To one living at a distance from railways, the whistle of the 
engine gives a thrill of novelty, and a sudden pleasure. There is 
a romance, and even a poetry in railways. At least, to one un- 
accustomed to leave home, a railway journey is a rare enjoyment. 
He cannot see the great, smooth engine rolling into the platform, 
or behold the faces at the windows, or take his seat, without a 
certain excitement, or nervous thrill, that is utterly unknown to 
the experienced traveller. The comfortable, cushioned seat, the 
electric light overhead, the mirrors all around him, the new, 
strange faces, each with its secret soul looking out, anxious, hope- 
ful, or perplexed ; the very isolation of his travelling companions 
and the mystery that hangs around their unknownness ; the quiet 
that settles down on the carriage as it glides out so smoothly 
from the station ; the rapid succession of scenes that move across 
the field of vision — all is novel, all unexperienced, all delightful ! 
He would give the world to know who, or what, is that old gen- 
tleman who has pulled his rug around him and is buried in his 
papers ; or that young, pale fellow, who is so much at home, he 
must be a much travelled man ; or that young girl, who is gazing 
so steadfastly through the window. And the real pleasure is, that 
all is mystery, and wonder, and the unknown, even to the end. 



274 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

LXXX. 

Twenty-five years ago I thought that a Cunard, or White Star 
liner, outward bound, was the most interesting sight on earth. I 
think so still. The silence of its movements, its obedience to the 
slightest touch, the risks and hazards before it, when it is but a 
speck on the illimitable deep, and the moonlight is all around it, 
or when it is rocked from billow to billow, like a cork ; but, 
above all, the strange, mysterious faces that look from behind their 
veils at you, and the stranger drama that is being enacted there — 
all conspire to make that floating caravenserai one of those objects 
of interest and wonder that carry with them always the glamor 
and mystery of another world. That is, to the inexperienced. I 
dare say, that commercial traveller who has crossed the Atlantic 
twenty times, and who seems so much at home there upon the 
sloping deck, thinks otherwise. Probably, he is calculating how 
much he will win at poker or euchre ; or what seat he shall have 
at table. That lady, too, who has j ust done Europe, and who 
looks so tired and blasee, is just hoping that the beastly voyage 
may be soon over, that she may plunge once more into the glori- 
ous whirl of New York excitement. But to the untravelled, the 
inexperienced, all is wonder and mystery, from the mysterious 
being up aloft who is the master of our destinies, to the grimy 
fireman, who comes up from the Inferno, to catch one breath of 
fresh salt air. 

LXXXI. 

If the untravelled is wise, he will speak to no one but in 
monosyllables, and preserve his own incognito and inexperience 
to the end. Thus, he, too, will be a mystery, and somewhat in- 
teresting to others, who will be dying to penetrate behind his 
mask. And all around will bear the glamor of unknownness 
to his imagination. It is horrible — that disillusion about people, 
around whom you have woven your own webs of fancy. Now, 
if you accost that commercial traveller, you will, you must, reveal 
the fact that you are crossing the Atlantic for the first time ; and 
down you go several degrees in his esteem. Or, if you are happy 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 27$ 

enough to get acquainted with that young lady in the canvas 
chair, blue veiled, and with infinite rugs about her, she will 
probably tell you "she has just done Yurrup, and is tired of the 
whole show." And the airy web of fancy is rudely torn asunder. 
Or, if you should come to know the officers, and they, with their 
usual kindness, tell you all about their vessel, and their expe- 
riences, or gossip about the passengers, or show you the tre- 
mendous mechanism that is the heart-throb and life-pulse of the 
ship, you will have to come down to the standpoint of common- 
place ; and before you step ashore at New York, your nerves will 
have cooled down, and you will regard the ship of fancy as a 
black old hulk, with a hideous brass kettle in its centre. 



LXXXII. 

There is a great deal more than we are accustomed to think 
in this habit of reticence and reverence. Touch not, taste not, if 
you would keep fresh the divine fancies that spring from a pure 
imagination, excited by pure and inspiring literature. It was the 
irreverent curiosity of our first parents that opened their eyes to 
unutterable things. They touched, tasted, and saw. Better for 
them and their posterity had they kept the reverence due to the 
behests of the Most High, and with it their unsullied innocence 
and blessed want of knowledge. There was a tradition of our 
childhood that the mother bird would desert a nest once breathed 
upon by others. The place was profaned and she would haunt it 
no longer, even though the blue or speckled eggs should never 
come to maturity. Even so with the spirit. It refuses to go back to 
places once dishallowed by knowledge. It prefers to hover over 
lonely heights, and to haunt unpeopled solitudes ; and there to 
keep the virginal freshness of its inexperience unsullied by 
knowledge that opens the eyes of mind and body, but blinds 
the vision of the soul. 



LXXXIII. 

But, coming back under the umbrage and gloom of great trees 
from the illimitable expanses of sea and sky, I ask myself why I 



276 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

experience a sudden narrowing and contraction of spirit, although 
my mind is as free and untrammelled as before. And why do 
the people, sick of their prison houses and the narrow limitations 
of daily life, seek for freshness down there as close to the sea 
as they can go ? For they will not look at the sea from afar, nor 
from safe vantage grounds, but they creep down and sit on rocks 
that overhang the tremendous depths ; and imperil their lives by 
going lower and lower still, until their feet are washed by the in- 
coming, irresistible tides. What do they want ? What do they 
seek ? It is not pure air alone. That they can have on moun- 
tain summits. Yet they never go to the mountains. But the 
most unpoetic, unromantic, prosaic people will seek the seashore, 
and remain there the whole day long, and tear themselves away 
from it with difficulty, and even when it is only a memory and a 
dream, will speak of it the whole winter long, and bear the 
worries and work of the year in the hope that they shall seek 
and see the sands and waves and the far horizon again. 

LXXXIV. 

I experienced a similar sense of imprisonment and freedom 
once in a brief, very brief holiday abroad. I never saw the Alps 
from their summits, and therefore must not speak disparagingly 
of them. But I passed through gorges and ravines, and lonely 
valleys, several thousands of feet above the sea, but everywhere 
felt, even on the highest altitudes, as if I were walking the flagged 
courtyard of a prison, with impassable, unscalable granite walls 
around and above, grinding and crushing the spirit. Perhaps if I 
had stood on the St. Bernard, or Monte Rosa, and looked around 
on the white cold crests that capped the undulations of crags and 
peaks without number, my sensations would have been different. 
But I well remember drawing a great breath of relief when the 
train steamed out from beyond Interlaken, and we passed . by 
Fribourg, and saw in a moment the Lake Leman, unbounded in 
that direction but by the sky. It was just as if a person, half- 
asphyxiated by the thick air of a prison cell, had been suddenly 
summoned to life, liberty, and pure, sweet, wholesome breathing 
again. 






UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. V7 

LXXXV. 

I cannot explain it, except by the theory of our universal and 
insatiable craving after the unbounded, the Infinite. You imprison 
the soul, when you limit its aspirations. It must be in touch with 
the universe. It is the one thing on earth, the only thing, that 
cannot make its home here. All things else are content to do 
their little work, perform their little part, and die. Winds arise 
and blow, and pass away ; seas come and go, and scatter them- 
selves on the sands ; leaves bud and develop, and fall ; animals 
are born, pass on to maturity, and return to the inorganic state. 
Man alone looks out and beyond this planet. Here he hath no 
lasting dwelling-place. His soul is with the stars. And therefore 
it chafes at its imprisonment in the body ; and even the accidental 
environments of place and scenery affect this strange, homeless 
exile, that is forever pining after its own country. How sweetly 
the Church interprets this feeling in the beautiful Benediction 
Hymn : 

Qui vitam sine termino 

Nobis donet in patria. 

And that is the vision we look for when we strain our eyes across 
the sunlit sea, and dream of things beyond the visible horizon, but 
not beyond the horizon of our hopes. 

LXXXVI. 

Hence, the secret of the Welt-Schmerz, the dreary, hopeless 
pessimism that has sunk like a thunder cloud on the minds of all 
modern thinkers, and blackens every page of modern literature 
is, that these unhappy unbelievers deny their destiny and vocation, 
and denying it, refuse to pursue it, and sink down into mere deni- 
zens of earth. The moment they yield to the sordid temptation 
of disbelieving their own immortality, they excommunicate them- 
selves from the universe. They are no longer part of the great, 
stupendous whole. Life becomes a wretched span, limited on 
both sides by the gulf of nothingness, instead of being the pre- 
lude to the vast eternity of existence that is connoted by immor- 



2?8 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

tality. Man is. a clod, a senseless atom, an inorganic substance, 
galvanized for a moment into an organism. He is but a self-con- 
scious yet insignificant part of the chemistry of Nature, with no 
relations, least of all eternal correspondences, with the vast spirits 
of the universe. 

LXXXVII. 

I cannot help thinking that mad Lear upon the moorland, 
whipped by the storm, disowned by his daughters, and accom- 
panied only by a fool, is the type of such unhappy beings. For 
irreligion is insanity. Just as the latter is but the partial and dis- 
torted view of the diseased mind that looks out at Nature ; so the 
former is the half-vision that refuses to see the perfect whole, 
rounded into unity and uniformity under the Almighty Hand. And 
forth the discrowned victim goes, " the king walking in the mire," 
as the Wise Man saw him, the storms of life and tempestuous 
thought are around him, the children of his genius execrate him 
for his alienation of their birthright, he has with him as " guide, 
philosopher, friend," a fool — shall we say, his own darkened and 
stammering intellect ? And the gloom and desolation grow 
deeper and deeper around him, for he sees no hope or prospect of 
the dawn ; but only the night, and the night, and the night ! 



LXXXVIII. 

It is true there is a certain strange luxury in this intellectual 
melancholy and depression. But the motive is not sane ; the ex- 
perience is not wholesome. However much we may pity the lone- 
liness, or admire the genius of all these modern pessimists, " and 
their name is legion," they are undoubtedly a wretched and de- 
generate lot. Sadness is their portion ; life has a dreary outlook 
to them ; the heat of battle is not in their veins ; the cry of vic- 
tory is not on their lips. Life is all a hideous drama, until death 
tears down the curtain, and the lights are extinguished ; and with 
tears on their pallid faces, the spectators pass out into the night. 
How that dreary, dull undertone of sadness rolls through all 
modern literature ! Never a note of triumph, never a psalm of 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 279 

hope, never a glorious prophetic paean about the future that is to 
be, where man shall touch his real spiritual evolution, and reach 
his finality amongst his brethren of the skies. But a low deep 
wail, musical enough, if you like, echoing along the minor chords 
of human misery, and sobbing itself away into silence, unless the 
wind moaning among the tangled grasses and nettles above the 
deserted and forgotten grave, can be taken as the echo in nature 
of the threnodies that wailed from such desolate and despairing 
lives. 

LXXXIX. 

" Our desires went beyond our destinies," they say, " and thus 
were we happy." Nay, it was not your desires, but your powers, 
that reached beyond your imagined and narrowed destinies, and 
hence you were unhappy. You would not recognize facts. You 
stretched yourselves on a Procrustean bed, and sought a comfort 
that would not come. You were made other than you thought. 
You disputed the very laws of Nature when you contended that 
those faculties of reason, imagination, affection, were limited in 
their development and enjoyment to the transient objects of the 
senses and of this lower life. You refused to believe in the infal- 
lible proportion of things ; the rigid, inexorable law that destiny 
must proportion itself to nature ; and that the eternal harmonies 
that govern all things demanded an infinity for cravings that were 
infinite;, an eternity for love that was stronger than death. But 
this you refused to accept. You made yourselves monsters, 
anomalies in creation. Like the barbarians of old, you proved to 
yourselves that the destiny of the sun was to sink in the sea, and 
be extinguished. You could not understand how to-morrow, and 
to-morrow, and to-morrow, he is destined to rise, and " exult again, 
like a giant, to run his destined course." 



XC. 

And so we have, especially in France, all those reveurs and 
penseurs, and moralists, and soliloquists, fleeing from practical 
life, and with heads bent and drooping eyes, wandering through 



280 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

the solitudes of Nature, and talking to trees, and trying to catch 
in the murmur of the stream, or the whisper of the wind, some 
answer to the eternal questionings of weary and dispirited minds. 
The rush from society to Nature is a curious phenomenon of our 
age. It is a symptom of the strange morbidity that has come 
down upon the world, since philosophers and poets first dis- 
turbed, then broke up, the healthy equilibrium of Christian teach- 
ing in the minds of their disciples. The return to Nature, the 
elimination of its omnipresent, beneficent Creator, the searching 
everywhere for the great god, Pan, the disappointment, the un- 
rest, the self-disgust and weariness, are visible everywhere in 
those pages that interpret emotions and thoughts, which probably 
the eyes of men would never have seen, if all this solitariness and 
introspection and reverie were not tinged with that species of 
affectation and vanity which is at once the cause and effect of all 
that eccentricity, which drives men from the orbit of their species, 
and compels them to an existence, unhappy and alone. 



XCI. 

How different the eternal hope, the far visioning, the ever 
exultant paean that rises from the Christian heart ! It is always 
childhood and morning, and great peace, and eternal, invincible 
faith in the ultimate perfection of all feeble and unstable things. 
Nature, the sombre and veiled companion of the children of un- 
faith, becomes the revealed and laughing nurse of the children of 
belief. She, too, is but the beloved servant in our Father's house 
where we are the children. She puts on no Sibylline airs, utters 
no phrenetic prophecies, conceals no subtle meanings, speaks no 
mysterious language. All the occult mysticism that unbelief 
affects to see beneath her phenomenon, resolves itself into the 
sweet simplicities of one who is a handmaiden to the great Lord 
of all things. And hence, we are not frightened by her power, 
nor terrified by her magic, nor awed by her sublimity. All her 
motions and signs we refer to a Cause and an End. We appreciate 
their beauty and holiness ; but rest not there. All things in her 
and about her round to perfection — that final perfection which is 
God! 



UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 28 1 

XCII. 

From summer maturity and splendor, the year is moving 
steadily onward to the decline and ashen grayness of winter 
again. The garden beds, shorn of all their blossoms through the 
slips that are to be reserved for next summer, look mutilated of 
ail their ripened strength and beauty, their strong stalks having 
developed into wood, the especial horror of a gardener. There 
is a smell of frost in the early evening, as the fogs rise ghost-like 
from the valleys ; and the sun has sunk down from the imperial 
heights of summer and taken humbly a lower arc in the heavens. 
How swiftly has the summer gone ! It seems but yesterday that 
so late as nine, or half-past nine o'clock, I watched the trees 
blackening against the saffron sunset. Now, it is pitch dark at 
eight o'clock. The swallows are training their young for the 
autumnal flight, and holding more frequent conclaves in the 
skies and on the roofs. The hum of the threshing machine comes 
mournfully from afar off. I see the rich produce of the harvest 
flung into its gaping mouth to come forth seed and grain. The 
stags are belling in yonder forest. The first patch of gold is seen 
on the chestnut. Nature is winding up her little affairs in view 
of her approaching demise. And the winds are beginning to 
rise, and practise their winter requiems over a dead and silent 
world. 

XCIII. 

The great transatlantic liners are filled, every berth, with 
"travelled men from foreign lands," rushing homewards to the 
little roof that shelters them, and the little lives which are linked 
with theirs. The equinoctial gales are blowing in their teeth ; yet 
the home-comers speed onwards. Home and love await them 
across the white breakers of the angry seas. Everywhere the tur- 
bulent riotousness of summer is giving way to the rigid order of 
winter. The hatches are being fastened down, and everything must 
be snug and tight before the rain, and the snow, and the storm. 
The time is coming for the merry fire, and the beloved book, and 
the tea-urn, and the curtained and carpeted luxuries of home. 



282 UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. 

And outside — housed, too, for evermore against all the dangers 
and vicissitudes of life — the beautiful, mysterious dead sleep on in 
their silent cities. The moonlight throws black shadows of shrub 
or cross athwart their graves. The seasons come and go, and 
they are swept round and round in the swift diurnal march of 
Mother Earth. But they are at rest. Theirs is the peace of 
eternity. Theirs, the fruition. Ours, still the faith and the hope — 
in God, in His eternal laws, in our own souls. 

I trust in Nature, for the stable laws 

Of beauty and utility — Spring shall plant, 

And Autumn garner to the end of time. 

I trust in God, — the right shall be the right, 

And other than the wrong, whilst He endures. 

I trust in my own soul, that can perceive 

The outward and the inward, — Nature's good 

And God's. 



THE END. 



314-77-24- 



